Professor Dijkstra, famous for so many of the now fundamental theories and algorithms used daily by computer scientists everywhere, has passed away.

I can remember sitting in my undergraduate classes, looking over Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm and realising that it was a simple and elegant solution for something I had been trying to solve on my own for months. I can remember reading “GO TO Statement Considered Harmful“, which is considered to be the beginning of the structured style of programming that I have taught to more students than I can remember. I can remember desperately trying to remember how his name was spelled during an exam.

It is strange thought to think that computer science is such a young field that most of our founders are still with us. It is sad to realise that one less of them walks with us today.