The problem with discussions about this hateful list is that discussion of the interesting, timeless comments is drowned out by arguments about whether BASIC still warps minds (or whether it ever did), whether physicists should share FORTRAN, what we could possibly learn from APL's mistakes, what made PL/I so bad, and what company might constitute a modern-day IBM.
Many of the comments on the list are out of date. Many of the rest are such unravellable apothegms, incomprehensible without a context that most of us don't have, that trying to apply them to any modern-day scenario in the way that Dijkstra intended is an exercise more in creativity and personal bias than in interpretation.
Most of the discussion in this comment section is either about the comments which now appear trollish (such as the BASIC one) or about Dijkstra's software design philosophy, which is only extremely tangentially related to this list.
Many of the comments on the list are out of date. Many of the rest are such unravellable apothegms, incomprehensible without a context that most of us don't have, that trying to apply them to any modern-day scenario in the way that Dijkstra intended is an exercise more in creativity and personal bias than in interpretation.
Most of the discussion in this comment section is either about the comments which now appear trollish (such as the BASIC one) or about Dijkstra's software design philosophy, which is only extremely tangentially related to this list.