Edsger Dijkstra, one of the founders of computer science, passed away today after a long struggle with cancer.  In most programming circles, he’s well known for his article Go To Statement Considered Harmful, which first appeared in 1968.  Anybody with a computer science degree, or who has studied algorithms, probably is familiar with the Shunting Yard algorithm for parsing arithmetic expressions, and his shortest path algorithm.

It’s a sad day for computer science, but he does leave us plenty by which to remember him.