Edsger Dijkstra passed away two days ago. Since computer science is still so young and most of its legends are still living, it just seems very odd to have one of them pass. Dijkstra’s name was one of the first that I learned as a beginning CS student, and one that I would hear often during my classes. He was brilliant without a doubt and did so much groundbreaking work especially in securing the mathematical foundations of programming. Not to mention that as I just learned from his obituary, he had a van used for travel that he called the Touring Machine. That alone sends his geek cred through the roof.