Famous essay (more accurately, a collection of quotes) by EwDijkstra.  Rather controversial and inflammatory; more so when it was written.  The targets of Dijkstra's barbs -- popular industrial languages at the time such as FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC -- are far less widely used today, although BASIC is still widely used if you count VisualBasic.  

Also contains lots of flames for IbmCorporation, which in the 70s had a reputation and market position even greater than that of MicroSoft today.

Also contains lots of useful bits of advice.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html

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