Until the mid-1960s computer programming was considered more an art (or a craft) than a scientific discipline. In Harlan Mills's words (1986), "programming the 1970s was regarded as a private, puzzle-solving activity of writing computer instructions to work as a program". In the late 1960s, computer programming was in a state of crisis. Dijkstra was one of a small group of academics and industrial programmers who advocated a new programming style to improve the quality of programs. Dijkstra, who had a background in mathematics and physics, was one of the driving forces behind the acceptance of computer programming as a scientific discipline. He coined the phrase "structured programming" and during the 1970s this became the new programming orthodoxy. As the originator of the structured programming movement (the first remarkable movement in the history of computer programming), his ideas about programming methodology helped lay the foundations for the birth and development of the professional discipline of software engineering, enabling programmers to organize and manage increasingly complex software projects. As Bertrand Meyer (2009) noted, "The revolution in views of programming started by Dijkstra's iconoclasm led to a movement known as structured programming, which advocated a systematic, rational approach to program construction. Structured programming is the basis for all that has been done since in programming methodology, including object-oriented programming."