As someone whose first language was BASIC, which led me down a path that eventually culminated in a CS Ph.D, I have also not been a fan of that quote.
It implies that Dijkstra was a terrible educator who could only truly teach blank minds. For all his imagination and creativity on theoretical CS and math, he was very rigid in other ways. Imagine a history professor saying that students who have been exposed to various myths and ideologies are mentally mutilated beyond hope, or a literature professor saying that students who have been exposed to pop culture retellings of the classics are mentally mutilated beyond hope.
Remember that Dijkstra looked down on anyone who wrote using word processors, because he thought any academic should be able to work out their argument in their head and just write it down. Eventually he came to even reject the mechanical typewriter.
It implies that Dijkstra was a terrible educator who could only truly teach blank minds. For all his imagination and creativity on theoretical CS and math, he was very rigid in other ways. Imagine a history professor saying that students who have been exposed to various myths and ideologies are mentally mutilated beyond hope, or a literature professor saying that students who have been exposed to pop culture retellings of the classics are mentally mutilated beyond hope.
Remember that Dijkstra looked down on anyone who wrote using word processors, because he thought any academic should be able to work out their argument in their head and just write it down. Eventually he came to even reject the mechanical typewriter.