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Not advocating Alan Kay's view on Dijkstra here, but his answer to this is still very funny: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KivesLMncs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KivesLMncs</a><p>"You may know that arrogance in computer science is measured in Nano-Dijkstras. [..] I wrote a rebuttal paper just named 'On the fact that most software in the world is written on one side of the Atlantic'."
24 years later, the description/criticism he makes of the American university culture is accurate for (at least most of) Europe as well. We even have "management science" everywhere.
I like his description of one unfortunate aspect of American culture he discovered on his first visit:<p>"...for the first time in my life I was confronted with a civilization that did not give its scientists the automatic benefit of the doubt or the respect that I was used to. On that trip I learned the word "egg-head" as a truly untranslatable Americanism...I was shocked to see how intellectuals could be-—as it were—-by definition suspect, and I remember that the feeling of uncertainty from which I saw my colleagues suffer, worried me very much."