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At the end of explaining the "bakery algorithm", he says "I am proud that I stumbled on it" He doesn't say "I invented it", "I came with it", "I wrote it", etc,
by _448 4y ago
At the end of explaining the "bakery algorithm", he says "I am proud that I stumbled on it" He doesn't say "I invented it", "I came with it", "I wrote it", etc, etc.
In my career I have seen that people who are true geniuses are also very humble!
- talaketu 4y agoIndeed - though I think this is a mathematical philosophy about theories. "Genius" is a nice word choice to emphasize your point - it refers to some kind of distinct spirit that happens to inspire the person, not the person themself. (A little like writing vs typing.)
- lifefeed 4y agoThere's a list of his papers with little notes by him on every one at https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html . His casual notes are themselves an absolute education. My favorite is on "Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System", where he applies the lessons of special relativity to understand computers, and he says: > Jim Gray once told me that he had heard two different opinions of this paper: that it's trivial and that it's brilliant. I can't argue with the former, and I am disinclined to argue with the latter.
- lanstin 4y agoI think if one thoroughly understands this paper then all the rest of distributed systems theory makes sense.
- clpm4j 4y ago100% agreed. Arrogance is a sure sign of brittleness.
- andrepd 4y agoAbsolutely. Conversely, I find that the people who are exceedingly eager on self-aggrandisement are usually mediocre.