Intellectual control
Software today is staggeringly larger than the programs of the 1960s. George Fairbanks interrogates whether that means it's under our intellectual control or if we found ways to make progress without Edsger Dijkstra's high standards.
| Talk Title | Intellectual control |
| Speakers | George Fairbanks (Google) |
| Conference | O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference |
| Conf Tag | Engineering the Future of Software |
| Location | New York, New York |
| Date | February 24-26, 2020 |
| URL | Talk Page |
| Slides | Talk Slides |
| Video | |
In the early days of software engineering, Edsger Dijkstra warned us not to let the size and complexity of our programs cause us to lose “intellectual control” due to the limited nature of our minds. To George Fairbanks’s knowledge, Dijkstra never defined precisely what intellectual control was. Our software today is staggeringly larger than the programs of the 1960s, so does that mean we have it under our intellectual control or did we find ways to make progress without Dijkstra’s high standards?
