"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra
Of course, this is the guy who said "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." And while I believe I understand his point he was trying to make, I have much higher respect for a person who still likes to get their hands dirty (still actually spends significant time programming computers) rather than just dealing with abstract theory, algorithms, analysis, etc. Yes, I know that Dijkstra knew how to program (and did so, extensively, especially earlier in his career). But this is the guy who never owned his own computer -- even after personal computers became commonplace. That, coupled with the above comment about BASIC (and other comments I've read from him like it) make him come across as kind of an elitist -- like programming is beneath him or something.
Perhaps my take is wrong, and it very well could be. But I will say this. If Dijkstra was still alive and well, and you put him, Guy Steele, and Don Knuth in a room and asked me to pick two of the three to spend the day with, Dijkstra would be the one left out in the cold.
No harm, Dijkstra never struck me as the kind of person that would want to spend a day in a room with anyone, either. Computer Science is about studying the computation which can be done in hardware - not just Python, not just on one chipset, not just on a von Neuman machine, but in general. "Programming" as I think you mean it is a very small subset of that.
He was obviously brilliant and very perceptive with regard to many things in the field. However I still think it is over the top that the guy didn't even own a computer.
There are many who would rather spend their careers just writing applications without ever analyzing the differences between two algorithms, much less ever studying or thinking about computation in general. Then there are those who would spend their careers strictly on theoretical endeavors, and do not wish to continue writing applications or software systems of significant value. It is my personal opinion that the best Computer Scientists are the ones that regularly do both.
Or -- and more relevant to their professional competence -- to develop a large, complex and safety-critical system, such as air traffic control; I wouldn't choose Dijkstra over Knuth or Steele for that job either.