Dijkstra showed particular appreciation for Haskell (see http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/OtherDocs/To%20the%20Budg...).

Hilariously he begins the petition by disparaging the university, the city, and the entire state. I wonder how well that went?

He definitely knew how to make friends.

> Haskell, though not perfect, is of a quality that is several orders of magnitude higher than Java.

I'm pretty sure he would assess Python a few orders of magnitude lower than Java. Probably warranting the need for a log scale for the quality of programming languages.

Why do you think so?

for one: Java has a specification. Python does not.

His magician archetype was out-of-control, but at least he had taste.