On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Gwern Branwen
As well, in no Google hit did I find any specific citation to Dijkstra. Hence, I conclude that because it is insightful and sounds like Dijkstra (eg. his submarine quote), it has become apocryphally associated with him but is *not* actually a Dijkstra quote.
To follow up: - 'telescopes' does not appear anywhere in the EWDs: http://ewd.cs.utexas.edu.master.com/texis/master/search/?sufs=0&q=telescopes&xsubmit=Search&s=SS - Ruud Koot points to an August* 1993 PhD thesis (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.53.8045&rep=rep1&type=pdf) which attributes it, with no citation or sourcing information, to Dijkstra - a Redditor claims, with no citation or sourcing information, that it was Marvin Minsky (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/jy1zw/psa_dijkstra_did_not_say_...) * that is, well after the original January 1993 article -- gwern http://www.gwern.net