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John McCarthy Has Died
- apgwoz 15y agoDoes anyone have a better article? I can't find any other information about it. I found out from the NYC Lisp mailing list, and Wikipedia confirmed it. Sad, sad, sad day. :(
- ErrantX 15y agoDo you have a source (i.e. link to the mailing list)? Unfortunately the person who added it to the Wiki article didn't add one.
- apgwoz 15y agoThe archives to the mailing list are private, so I can't link. You can see in the wikipedia history that who ever made the edit claims to have received word from McCarthy's sister.
- ErrantX 15y agoYeh; unfortunately that's not a strong enough source, particularly for this sort of edit :) Thanks anyway - I am sure it will appear in time. Usually stuff like this is legit; but sometimes it isn't. So the policy is to have a reliable source or nothing.
- apgwoz 15y agoI tweeted at @stanfordeng, hoping that they can confirm.
- tensor 15y agoFor what it's worth, it was just posted to the University of Waterloo CS announcement list: "I just received news that John McCarthy passed away in his sleep a few hours ago; he was at home."
- j2labs 15y agoWhat a terrible month for computing...
- pyre 15y agoMy thoughts exactly. It's been a black month for computing.
- TruthElixirX 15y agoI have a feeling this will start being a lot more common in the computer world. The founders of everything are starting to hit their later ages. :(
- bartl 15y agoYes.One of the more exciting things about computer science, a few decades ago, is that it was all brand new. Even the pioneers were contemporaries. These were exciting times to live in, since it made me feel like we were on the edge of a brand new technology. But now, the pioneers have gotten old. And the excitement is slowly ebbing away.
- Maakuth 15y agoWith all these great minds from our field passing away, I'm beginning to think we should pause for a moment and think what we could do to thank all those legendary computing figures still with us? Knuth, Kernighan and Woz come to mind, certainly there are a lot more.
- edward 15y agoTime for the black bar to appear at the top of Hacker News?
- wanorris 15y agoYes. Unless the information is actually inaccurate, there's not even any question. What an amazing pioneer. He will be missed.
- asolove 15y agoFor a fun portrait of McCarthy's early life and aspirations, see the passages about him in "What the Doormouse Said". [1] - Born to communist activists in 1920s Boston - Studied math with John Nash at Princeton - Organized the first computer-chess match in 1965, pitting his own algorithm against one created by computer scientists in the USSR, with moves communicated by telegraph. While many will remember him for Lisp and his contributions to AI, perhaps equally important was his role in running a research lab in what became a characteristic West Coast fashion: finding intelligent people, setting them free to do what they wanted, and obdurately arguing with them over very little provocation. He was far enough from mainstream to be familiar, and even sympathetic to the 60s counterculture, but also cynical enough to embrace technology, rather than revolution, as a way forward. If this sounds a bit like running a startup today, there's one main reason it does: John McCarthy. [1] http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&lpg=PT113&ots=1FLa3U0gfc&dq=john%20mccarthy%20what%20the%20dormouse&pg=PT113#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&lpg=PT113&...
- gabeiscoding 15y agoExcellent book BTW, would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of not just computing but what we think of as UI/UX. It's almost depressing to see the same problems we keep (re-)solving have had great minds beating on them for quite a while now :)
- ErrantX 15y agoWhether or not he has passed; if anyone has the book and fancies spending a little time adding interesting material to the WP article about him, that would be nice :)
- elliottcarlson 15y agoI wonder if the chess match had any influence on the movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project"
- sajid 15y agoAnyone got a reliable source corroborating this?
- apgwoz 15y agoThe WikiPedia history states that there was some personal communication with his sister.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sspencer 15y agoLong live the first Knight of the Lambda Calculus!
- tef____ 15y agoThis seems to be the original tweet http://twitter.com/#!/wendyg/status/128554733714669568 http://twitter.com/#!/wendyg/status/128554733714669568
- burke 15y agoNot to be "that guy", but does she have any connection to him? Why should I believe she isn't just some random that made that up?
- waterlesscloud 15y agoLooking at her linked webpage from Twitter, she's a freelance journalist who has written on tech topics, including articles about McCarthy. http://www.pelicancrossing.net/credits.htm http://www.pelicancrossing.net/credits.htm
- tef____ 15y agoAs a guy on the internet I am pretty sure she didn't make it up. I think we will have to wait for confirmation, but not long.
- unexpected 15y agoSteve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, and now John McCarthy - maybe some truth that deaths always come in 3's. Quite unnerving. We should propose National Computing Month or something for October.
- huherto 15y agoPoisson distribution? I wish I knew more probability and statistics to understand why this happens.
- pjscott 15y agoThe explanation could be simpler than that: you just don't notice when notable deaths don't clump together.
- scott_s 15y agoYou can take any arbitrary, long running sequence and partition it into threes. Also: selection bias.
- gwern 15y agoTo quote the wise _Principia Discordia_: > "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."
- blahedo 15y agoI confess that when the news about Dennis Ritchie was posted, I immediately flashed to the thought, "who's number three?" Thing is, so did a lot of other people, and tagging John McCarthy's WP page in this way would be just the sort of prank/hoax that would inspire. So the "deaths come in threes" aphorism makes me more suspicious of this, not less.
- dreamux 15y agoHe has a string of accomplishments that still live on in active development... and he made it to 84. That's a good run.
- kinghajj 15y ago(he (will (be (dearly (missed)))))
- anon_d 15y ago((will-be (dearly missed)) he) FTFY
- pjscott 15y agoWhenever people make Lisp jokes by nesting parentheses without regard for the semantics that they denote, I get a little disappointed. It's not anger, nor contempt; just a feeling that we can do better. (will-be 'john-mccarthy (modifier 'missed 'dearly)) Incidentally, "I feel like we can do better" would probably be a pretty good summary of what John McCarthy was about.
- kinghajj 15y agoI thought about doing something like that, but decided against it. I'm expressing condolences, not writing an obituary program!
- lukeschlather 15y agoIt would at least be nice to have the parentheses in some sense represent the parse tree for the sentence, like: (He (will be) (dearly missed)) That's not very Lispy, and I'm sure some linguists would have a thing or two to say about my tree, but it at least has a structure related to the meaning.
- jcromartie 15y agoOr, (assert (equal 'dearly (missed-amount 'john-mccarthy)))
- eru 15y agoYou should put more effort into your Lisp parody.
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- estel 15y agoThis really needs a better source. There's no citation provided, and Wikipedia can't keep any details of his death up without one. Basically, I have a spoonful of salt to hand.
- damienfir 15y agoYes, there isn't any news about this. This might be a good way to make people read about this kind of person.
- redthrowaway 15y agoAgreed. I did a quick Google News search and turned up nothing. Could be legit, or vandalism, but there's really no way to know until we have confirmation. - --EDIT-- Since I wrote this, I've seen one source appear, in Portuguese[1]. It's still unclear whether this story is legitimate, or if they simply copied wikipedia / the buzz surrounding the story. - --EDIT 2-- Globo is apparently the largest media conglomerate in South America[2] and thus unlikely to publish unsourced stories, so this looks (sadly) to be true. [1] http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2011/10/morre-john-mccarthy-pioneiro-da-inteligencia-artificial.html http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2011/10/morre-john-mc... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizações_Globo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizações_Globo
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- vasco 15y ago*Portuguese
- redthrowaway 15y agoFixed, much obliged.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
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- noblethrasher 15y agoStill awaiting a better source. The Wikipedia entry asserting his death has been reversed at the time of this writing...
- bluemoon 15y agoYeah, i'm still waiting on a source too other than twitter
- damienfir 15y agoSorry but, what is your source ?
- dpritchett 15y agoHere's the 1960 paper describing the original Lisp: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/recursive.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/recursive.html
- gonzo 15y agoMcCarthy's wife died in 1977 in a climbing accident http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Vera.html http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Vera.h...
- SkyMarshal 15y agoVery interesting. Off-topic thought, but... "So she joined the group to climb Annapurna, and was part of the second team to attempt the summit. You go up in pairs, so you do pairwise summit attempts - these Himalayan style things where you do base camps. So she was working her way to the upper camp as the first summit team was coming down between the topmost and the second topmost. They passed, and then she was lost - she and her partner were lost. We're quite sure they fell. They were roped together; we think one fell and took the other with them." As I was reading that I was thinking, 'why twos? that's not enough to anchor someone if they fall through an ice crevice or something, need at least three for that.' And then I get to the end, and that's exactly what happened. I wonder if people still attempt Himalayan mountains in twos like that.
- bhickey 15y agoCrevasses are normally encountered during glacier travel. These aren't particularly common on steep slopes. Moreover, climbing as a trio tends to be (much) slower than traveling as a pair. When weather and hypoxia are your biggest threat, speed can literally be the only thing keeping you alive. </climber notes="got sick around 4100m, big wimp">
- antimora 15y agoWe need better source.
- sajid 15y agoDeath date removed from Wikipedia. Latest edit shows: "(Protected John McCarthy (computer scientist): Violations of the biographies of living persons policy: Rumors of his death added to page. May be true, but better to wait than edit war."
- Protonk 15y agoThat was me. I saw the laughing squid link, followed it here, then discovered that their ultimate reference was the wikipedia article. I'm keeping tabs on the news so if an article pops up I'll add it or unprotect the article.
- dchest 15y agoThank you.
- ColinWright 15y agoDeath date now reinstated. (22:09 BST, 21:09 Zulu)
- felideon 15y agoIt [edit: the Brazilian article] cites Steven Levy, senior writer of Wired, as the source. It does not say where the source is found, but I assume it's this tweet: http://twitter.com/#!/stevenjayl/status/128568370055491584 http://twitter.com/#!/stevenjayl/status/128568370055491584 He may be a writer for Wired, but he doesn't seem to have a solid source either. EDIT: There seems to be someone that claims Stanford has confirmed it by phone, as you can see in the Discussion page of Wikipedia, though: "I spoke to the Associate Director of Communications at Stanford School of Engineering, and Dan Stober of Stanford News Service. Both have confirmed that Professor McCarthy passed away this weekend. They both said there were not a lot of details available at this time. An obituary will be issued by Stanford soon. http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320 http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320 -- I apologize for bad formatting. I'm not a regular Wiki editor. Joseph Chiu 24 October 2011, 2:11 PDT. I have not edited the article page."
- michaels0620 15y agoHere is another link (via google translate) with the news although with no source listed, they may have just been going off wendyg's tweet. http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fg1.globo.com%2Ftecnologia%2Fnoticia%2F2011%2F10%2Fmorre-john-mccarthy-pioneiro-da-inteligencia-artificial.html&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...
- TruthElixirX 15y agoWikipedia has removed this claim now.
- bradhall 15y agoBrazilian source: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fg1.globo.com%2Ftecnologia%2Fnoticia%2F2011%2F10%2Fmorre-john-mccarthy-pioneiro-da-inteligencia-artificial.html http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...
- runevault 15y agoIf this is true may have to get CL or Racket set up tonight and do some coding in memory. Ungh what a crappy month for Computer Science.
- wyclif 15y agoDeath always comes in threes.
- mark_l_watson 15y agoI saw him speak a few times at AAAI conferences - few people, if any, contributed more to the field of AI.
- tcanthony 15y agoYou're absolutely right. He was a living legend.
- faizanaziz 15y agoSeems like October 2011 has taken the best of tech, each great in their own way... RIP John McCarthy
- rblion 15y agoVisionary. Shine On! "His 2001 short story The Robot and the Baby[9] lightheartedly explored the question of whether robots should have (or simulate having) emotions, and anticipated aspects of Internet culture and social networking that became more prominent in the ensuing decade."
- patrickod 15y agoThe death has not been added to nndb, so I'm slow to believe it. nndb, for those of you who don't know, is the information source used by wolframalpha for its people results
- getsat 15y agohttp://i.imgur.com/Y02DM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Y02DM.jpg RIP. Thanks for inventing all that awesome stuff modern languages are constantly rediscovering.
- LabThug 15y agoI have this sign on my office door. I'll be putting his timeline on it tomorrow.
- edu 15y agoI'll cross my fingers and hope it's just a hoax of really, really, really bad taste.
- xxcode 15y agoI got a call this morning from his daughter that he has died this morning. Sorry to have him go.
- TheCondor 15y agoThis is selfish... but Dr. Knuth, please oh please pick up the pace a notch and select a side kick to finish your work. Please!
- cpr 15y agoThis is an understandable impulse, but completely ignores the nature of the work itself, which is essentially Knuthian. I don't think there's anyone else in the world, let alone an associate of his, who could continue this work. It's been years since I was around him (I worked at a Stanford spin-off startup in the early 80's that commercialized some TeX printing technologies), but it's hard to overestimate what he's accomplished. What a wonderful man!
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- Toddward 15y agoThat lists its source as this post, which lists its source as Wikipedia. Still uncorroborated in my mind.
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- ww520 15y agoOh no! Lisp has a huge impact on computing. It's hard to imagine how old it is.
- georgemcbay 15y agoIt is 53 years old. You don't have to "imagine" how old it is.
- ww520 15y ago53 years are like an eon in computing. Probably older than most of us. It's hard to imagine because it is very much relevant today despite its old age. RIP.
- Jun8 15y agoWhat, no HN black ribbon for McCarthy?
- chc 15y agoThere was one for a little while, but it apparently got removed as there was uncertainty about the claim. I'm sure it'll be back soon.
- umjames 15y agoIsn't there something about deaths happening in 3s? 1. Steve Jobs 2. Dennis Ritchie 3. John McCarthy
- 0x12 15y agoLet's hope that it is limited to 3. I get terribly antsy just thinking about who else in computing has reached their 70's and 80's.
- umjames 15y agoAgreed, and the close proximity of their deaths makes me think that that's it for a set of 3.
- astrange 15y agoYou can divide any list of more than three things into 3s.
- SlipperySlope 15y agoMy primary development computer, over many generations of system builds, has always been named mccarthy. Rest In Peace.
- pg 15y agoUnfortunately it's true. I just heard back from Peter Norvig, who says "He died peacefully in his sleep last night."
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- ColinWright 15y agoReplying to your original reference: http://twitter.com/#!/wendyg/status/128584398642757632 http://twitter.com/#!/wendyg/status/128584398642757632 Just to add to that - I've had a message from Wendy saying that McCarthy's daughter had 'phoned her with the news, and Wendy is the ultimate source of the wikipedia edit/entry.
- llambda 15y agoWhat sad news. I do hope that Standford makes a statement, just to clarify.
- bomatson 15y agoWhat a sad month
- Hitchhiker 15y agoOctober 2011 is turning out to be one sad month.
- malbs 15y agoBring on November
- ColinWright 15y agoIn response to the skepticism being expressed, I've just had a message from Wendy Grossman saying: "... his daughter phoned me. I'm the ultimate source for the wikipedia entry."
- hristov 15y agoLooks like someone has been doing "original research" on Wikipedia again.
- ColinWright 15y agoI'm not sure what you're sayimg or implyimg here, but it feels like an insult directed either at me or at Wendy, I'm not sure which. So let me state this a little more clearly. I, Colin D Wright, hereby state that my colleague, Wendy M Grossman, personally sent me a message stating explicitly that she had been phoned personally by the daughter of John McCarthy and told of his death. Now, in what way does that involve wikipedia, and who are you accusing of using WP for "original research"?
- JoshTriplett 15y agoI suspect hristov was snarkily pointing out that Wikipedia does not actually allow first-hand knowledge as a source.
- hristov 15y agoI did not in any way wish to insult you or Wendy. I was just making a sarcastic comment about the fact that Wikipedia discourages one from entering information on the site even if one had first hand direct knowledge of said information. This is one of the more controversial and often debated Wikipedia rules.
- 0x12 15y agoWhat a pity. I sense a black bar coming. The last few weeks have been terrible, one icon after another has fallen. What is different from other fields is that computing is still a young enough field that almost all of its luminaries except for the earliest ones are still alive. I fear the avalanche has only barely begun, and at some point the frequency of these will become high enough that either we will stop to notice or we will have that black bar on here more or less permanently.
- TruthElixirX 15y agoEventually, I think, there will cease to be icons within the industry. What we have now are the people who invented the internet/computers and the basic components. The people who are doing the inventing now are just as smart, but they aren't creating fundamental things, they are improving on an existing system. We don't say, "engineer team y invented the iCore series of processors." we sort of just say "Intel is coming out with a new set of processors." I'm not sure if I am making my point very clear. :\
- qq66 15y agoI think the distinction you're highlighting is between the people who start the giant companies of the industry, and the people who keep those companies successful. Everyone knows that Noyce/Moore/Grove built Intel, not many people knows who runs it today. The '50s computing leaders (mostly academics) are in their old age, the '70s leaders (academics and businessmen) are heading into retirement (except for Jobs unfortunately), and the later leaders (Google, Facebook) are still going strong.
- redthrowaway 15y agoBetween Gates, Zuckerberg, Larry and Sergey, Torvalds, RMS, Knuth, and a few others, there're still plenty of icons left and so I don't forsee your scenario happening anytime soon. I am generally an optimist, and think the number of icons to come is far greater than those who have come and gone.
- jc4p 15y ago
- monochromatic 15y ago)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
- LearnYouALisp 15y ago]
- bluemoon 15y agoI am deeply saddened with this loss to our community. He was such an influence to computer science as a whole.
- gmcabrita 15y agoIt is truly a sad day for AI and LISP. I can only hope he did not suffer in his last moments. RIP
- rbanffy 15y agoJohn McCarthy would say we are doing news completely wrong.
- shrikant 15y agoWell shit. I said it about a week back [1] (maybe a little indelicate, but in my defence, was a little over-wrought): The technology pioneers who were in their 20s/30s in the the 60s/70s are now really old. The next few years will likely see a bloodbath. Granted, he wasn't that young in those times, but the point holds. We're going to see a bunch of luminaries 'move on' in the coming months :( [1] https://twitter.com/#!/shr1k/status/125712526397816832 https://twitter.com/#!/shr1k/status/125712526397816832
- cies 15y agobloodbath? c'mon... that's a word reserved for death of a bunch of beings, in a short time span, by an 'unnatural' cause. he apparently died peacefully and naturally.
- Mithrandir 15y agoThis has got to be the most depressing month in awhile.
- bootload 15y agoI never understood why McCarthy was never featured at YC or Startupschool. Listening & being able to ask McCarthy questions would have been like peering into the past & future at the same time.
- protagonist_h 15y agoHere's a recent interview with him -- an excellent way to understand his perspective on the future of programming languages: http://www.infoq.com/interviews/mccarthy-elephant-2000 http://www.infoq.com/interviews/mccarthy-elephant-2000
- toybuilder 15y agoI'm the guy that called Stanford. Look, it's not that hard -- someone here must have talked to a Bay Area reporter about their company or their job at some point -- can you please tell her/him to follow up with Stanford and talk to Dan Stober at Stanford News Service and/or Andy Meyer in the Engineering Department? http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320 http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320
- beefman 15y agoProgress and its Sustainability http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/ Elephant 2000: A Programming Language Based on Speech Acts http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/elephant/elephant.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/elephant/elephant.html
- Jach 15y agoI totally called it. "They always go in threes." God damn it though. And fellow programmer students have no idea whom I'm talking about. Grar. (RIP '(JOHN MCCARTHY))
- tavisrudd 15y ago(let ((john-mccarthy '())) (with-backtracking john-mccarthy))
- ORioN63 15y agoI think one of the most important things you can do, while you're alive, is to change the world... Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy managed to do it. May them rest in peace, now, and be remembered for ever.
- Protonk 15y agoWP article is now updated. The techcrunch piece cited HN but the author also contacted Stanford faculty. Gamasutra also ran a short piece. The article is no longer protected if you guys want to update it or clean it up.
- Caligula 15y agoThis is very sad. John was a brilliant man who always made himself available to not only his students but random people(myself) emailing him for research advice.
- agentultra 15y agoHe left a legacy that touched my intellectual life. In that he will live on.
- Anilm3 15y agoI am without words, rest in peace.
- arjn 15y agoEarlier Ritchie and now McCarthy. "The old order changeth, yielding place to new." I wonder who the "new" will be ?
- LearnYouALisp 15y agoMULTIVAC aka Wolfram Alpha
- mtraven 15y agoHere lies a Lisper / Uninterned from this mortal package / Yet not gc'd / While we retain pointers to his memory
- brndnhy 15y agoIs there any way to implement these memorial black bars in a way that doesn't break the mobile HN apps? I assume they're scraping.
- devindotcom 15y agoConfirmed by Stanford Engineering: https://twitter.com/#!/stanfordeng/status/128615022044790784 https://twitter.com/#!/stanfordeng/status/128615022044790784 I've changed the attribution on the TechCrunch story by the way, though it still gives this thread a shout out.
- tyng 15y agoI saw the black band at the top of the page and I knew another great has left us - it's the black band of sorrow R.I.P
- jmatt 15y agoThis is my favorite John McCarthy story. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803627 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803627 I like how one simple succinct relevant question can say so much about Norvig's claims. It seems appropriate coming from the creator of LISP. And, of course, the mutual respect, professionalism they both had to leave it at that.
- samj 15y ago"If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry." — John McCarthy (speaking at the MIT Centennial in 1961). It's been pointed out that McCarthy used the term "utility" rather than "cloud", but many of us would argue they are one and the same. Indeed Wikipedia defines it as: "Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet)." In any case, can anyone think of anyone more deserving of the honour of the title "father of cloud computing" than McCarthy? I certainly can't.
- narag 15y agoJust the cloud? It seems a prediction of the Internet.
- sp332 15y agoI always liked this poster: http://www.xach.com/img/doing-it-wrong.jpg http://www.xach.com/img/doing-it-wrong.jpg (from http://xach.livejournal.com/170311.html http://xach.livejournal.com/170311.html)
- grosales 15y agoThank you John McCarthy. For your work, for your relentless curiosity, and inventiveness that helped us all. Without knowing, you set the path for many of us.
- edwardshen 15y agoIt reminded me of the death of Push Singh a few years ago, after I just started to know him personally. Rather than focusing on the woe, we tried to celebrate his life, achievements, and great inspirations he had brought us. It's really difficult to handle such sadness, but I guess it's very important for the rest of us to think about how we may continue their good will to advance the way we live and think, to inspire others, and to change the world to a better place.
- LoveLinux 15y agoAre there any modern people who make great contributions to science who are not Jewish? As a non-Jewish person, I'm thankful for what Jews have given the world. Thank you Mr. McCarthy.
- sramsay 15y agoSteve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie were obviously major pioneers (and I admired them both), but of the three, McCarthy's work impresses me the most. I still marvel at the profound degree of lateral thinking evident in his articles. I suspect this will be the least well reported obituary, which is kind of sad. He was surely one of the greats.
- cpher 15y agoWhy in G-d's name are you people hemorraging about who or where the source came from? As great a man as he was, this doesn't warrant coniption fits about who knew what first. You're acting like he held national secrets that upon his death would lead to some catastrophe. Give it a rest. The man was in his 80s and led a wonderfully productive life. Get back to work, assholes.
- elliottcarlson 15y agoWhile there may be a bit too much bickering going on about it - having a factual source is important instead of just believing a single tweet or Wikipedia edit.
- antoinehersen 15y ago)
- drygrass 15y agoWhat a grim year. Jobs, Ritchie, and now McCarthy.
- kbradero 15y agoworst year for CompSci.
- jcromartie 15y agoI got into programming through Logo in elementary school. Logo is a Lisp dialect. Even if it took me 15 years to rediscover Lisp, I am thankful for the good beginnings. Thanks to John McCarthy for making such huge contributions to the computing world, and to my hobby and career.
- rooshdi 15y ago"Program designers have a tendency to think of the users as idiots who need to be controlled. They should rather think of their program as a servant, whose master, the user, should be able to control it. If designers and programmers think about the apparent mental qualities that their programs will have, they'll create programs that are easier and pleasanter — more humane — to deal with." Thank you John, RIP
- tete 15y agoDamn, with all that people dieing I always have to think about American Pie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr-BYVeCv6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr-BYVeCv6U
- kraftbai 15y agoidol died 1by1 in dark october god bless Knuth I want to see vol7
- ewest 15y agoRecently published article with some citations of McCarthy's contributions: http://goo.gl/luVMq http://goo.gl/luVMq [The Australian Eye News]
- agavin 15y agoFor nearly two decades I was a diehard LISP advocate. I even forced all my programers to code three Crash Bandicoot and four Jak & Daxter games in custom LISP dialects that I wrote the compilers for (an article on one here http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/03/12/making-crash-ban... http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/03/12/making-crash-ban...). But by the mid 2000s I started doing the kind of programming I used to do in LISP in Ruby. It's not that Ruby is a better language, but mostly it was the momentum factor and the availability of modern libraries for interfacing with the vast array of services out there. Using the crappy unreliable or outdated LISP libraries -- if they worked at all -- was tedious. Plus the LISP implementations were so outmoded. It was very hard to get other programers (except a couple enthusiasts) to work that way. Ruby struct a decent compromise. And it's type system and object model are better than CL anyway. The syntax is more inconsistent, and the macro model nowhere near as good. But it turns out. Libraries and implementation matter a lot. Still, you can feel lots and lots of LISP influence in all the new runtime typed languages (Ruby, Python, etc). And 30 years later, listeners still rule! Anyway I bundled up some of my thoughts on this on my blog: http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/10/25/lispings-ala-john-mccarthy/ http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/10/25/lispings-ala-joh...
- pnathan 15y agoWith respect to the Library Problem - Have you investigated Quicklisp[1] using SBCL? I have found Quicklisp generally a better experience than CPAN, pip, Cabal, and the other package managers I've used. SBCL (A fork of CMUCL) is maintained monthly and recently had a very successful crowdfunding campaign. Of course, if you find CL itself to be weaker in areas important to you than (say) Ruby, none of the above matters. But I thought you might like to know. :-) http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/ http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/
- getsat 15y agoYou! Reading about all the cool stuff you guys did with GOOL is the reason I got into Lisp. Awesome to see that you post here on HN. :)
- malkia 15y ago
- naeem 15y agoI really hate waking up to a black bar at the top. RIP McCarthy, you are a legend through and through.
- jonutzz 15y agoTo those who know LISP, here's a response from benfitz which sums it up ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) :-(
- TedSelker 15y agoHe was deeply excited about the neutrino experiments reported in the last month and following it and other such news till the end. His daughter told me actually died while in the bathroom sitting on the pot.
- bjgraham 15y agoJohn McCarthy was an exceptional man. I wrote a short article on AI, Siri, and the fourth interface. His concept of engineering an artificial intelligence is soon materializing. http://blabeat.com http://blabeat.com