Science Quote by Edsger Dijkstra

Dijkstra’s line lands like a rebuke disguised as a pep talk: if mathematics feels boring, the failure isn’t in the subject but in the way we’re doing it. Coming from a computer science architect who treated clarity as an ethical obligation, it’s less motivational poster than disciplinary standard. “Should” is doing the heavy lifting. He’s not describing reality; he’s issuing a criterion for what counts as acceptable mathematical work, teaching, and even exposition.

The subtext is a rejection of math-as-drill, the schoolhouse tradition where technique is mistaken for understanding and tedium is treated as proof of rigor. Dijkstra’s career was built on the opposite wager: that elegance, precision, and surprise are not decorative extras but the engine of insight. In his world, a proof isn’t a bureaucratic form you fill out after the fact; it’s a guided tour of why something must be true. If the tour is dull, it’s probably because the guide is reciting steps rather than revealing structure.

Context matters: Dijkstra wrote through the rise of modern computing, when “math” could easily become either empty formalism or outsourced to machines. His insistence that it should never be boring is also a defense against that narrowing. Interesting mathematics, for him, isn’t about flashy topics; it’s about a mind encountering necessity, watching complexity collapse into a clean idea. Boredom is a smell test: it signals we’ve lost the plot.