I think finding fault with this kind of opinion is a symptom of the modern concept of "taking offence". Ie nobody can express an opinion without also showing that they respect others' opinions. But that's not right. We don't have to respect each others' opinions if we think they are wrong. What we must do in a free society is respect their right to have, and express, a different opinion.
Dijkstra clearly thinks that teaching BASIC is damaging people's brains so he says that loudly and clearly with a touch of humour. Should he water it down to avoid offending people that like BASIC?
When he has no argument other than the insult no, it really isn't funny. Why is understanding Cobol and BASIC a crime? No idea, only that the great and powerful EWD says so.
How could you possibly take that away from the quoted material?
Firstly, he doesn't say that understanding COBOL and BASIC is a crime: he says that teaching COBOL and BASIC should be regarded as a crime. And he lays out why: he says that exposure to those languages causes some kind of mental damage, so he is likening the teaching of them to the intentional infliction of an injury. Clearly this is tongue-in-cheek - it is highly unreasonable to infer that he literally wanted the teaching of two programming languages added to the criminal code, because this is absurd on its face.
The intended takeaway is that there are habits of thought learned by use of BASIC or COBOL that are must be unlearned to think about programming problems in that way that Dijkstra recommends.
Dijkstra has every write to voice his opionion however he pleases. And this isn't offending people who like BASIC. BASIC is a stupid language.
What it is about is how arrogant and absurd it is to say that learning BASIC causes brain damage. If people couldn't re-learn and develop new ideas, we wouldn't even have computers.
I think finding fault with this kind of opinion is a symptom of the modern concept of "taking offence". Ie nobody can express an opinion without also showing that they respect others' opinions. But that's not right. We don't have to respect each others' opinions if we think they are wrong. What we must do in a free society is respect their right to have, and express, a different opinion.
Dijkstra clearly thinks that teaching BASIC is damaging people's brains so he says that loudly and clearly with a touch of humour. Should he water it down to avoid offending people that like BASIC?