Dijkstra was known for his habit of carefully composing manuscripts with his fountain pen. The manuscripts are called EWDs, since Dijkstra numbered them with EWD as prefix. Dijkstra would distribute photocopies of a new EWD among his colleagues; as many recipients photocopied and forwarded their copy, the EWDs spread throughout the international computer science community. The topics were computer science and mathematics, and included trip reports, letters, and speeches. More than 1300 EWDs have since been scanned, with a growing number transcribed to facilitate search, and are available online at the Dijkstra archive of the University of Texas.<p>[ from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra#EWDs_and_writing_by_hand" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra#EWDs_and_wri...</a> ]
Most of the manuscripts are good, but I specifically recommend "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science". If you take the time to understand how Dijkstra was thinking when he wrote that, you're already ahead of the vast majority of computer science graduates.<p><a href="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036...</a>