> Dijkstra writes directly and with and air of authority, but his writing is not great. His style is pretentious and obfuscatory. Even worse, he uses his authoritative style to get away with tons of unsubstantiated assertions.
This bugs me as well. He's obviously made profound and exceptional contributions to the field but I don't like when he writes in the manner you pointed out where he's making bold statements without evidence. Worse is when people quote something Dijkstra wrote that he didn't back up with evidence as if it's true just because Dijkstra wrote it.