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It is always sad when someone dies, and especially so when that person was an inspiration for you. I met John at a party that I attended with my wife at PARC wh
by ChuckMcM 3y ago
It is always sad when someone dies, and especially so when that person was an inspiration for you. I met John at a party that I attended with my wife at PARC where he and Bob Taylor ("Boss Bob") were discussing microcode changes in the Alto that would speed up graphics rendering. As a young over confident pipsqueak I thought I could just wade into that conversation and add my thoughts but got so thoroughly trounced (but in a nice way) I just had to nod and slowly slink away :-). While hanging out with my wife another attendee came up to me and assured me that no, neither Bob nor John were being mean, they just had already covered a lot of the basics and options and their questions were at a much higher level. He assured me I'd catch up, just takes a bit of reading. I said thanks, feeling a bit better but really still feeling like the third grader who finds themselves in a college physics class.
When we got home my wife asked me what Bob had said to me, I explained that he and John and pretty much explained that I didn't know enough about graphics algorithms yet to engage in their discussion. She said, "No, not Bob Taylor, Bob Sproul."
- jhh 3y agoJust to clarify, not trying to correct anyone here, the third attendee was Bob Sproull, author of "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics"?
- rbanffy 3y agoI have that book. Took me a while to find a copy after reading it in college.
- larrywright 3y agoJust went looking for it myself. Archive.org has it: https://archive.org/details/principlesofinter00newm https://archive.org/details/principlesofinter00newm
- rbanffy 3y agoDoesn’t smell the same.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoYes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 3y agoAnd not to be confused with UC Berkeley's Robert Sproull, though I suspect he'd already died prior to this story's timeline: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gordon_Sproul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gordon_Sproul>
- auggierose 3y agoNever heard of this book, just got it for £0.55 (ok, £3.35 including postage). In my unsuccessful search to get it even cheaper, I came across this book, seems to be by the same Bob Sproull: https://www.routledge.com/The-Problem-Solving-Problem-Prevention-and-Decision-Making-Guide-Organized/Sproull/p/book/9780815361404 https://www.routledge.com/The-Problem-Solving-Problem-Preven... From graphics to management.
- DougMerritt 3y agoI haven't reconsidered "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics" from a more modern perspective, but it sure was a bible. Great book.
- da02 3y agoAlan Kay said Bob Taylor found a way to get all these "lone wolves" to work together. Did you see anything like this at PARC? Why are you and other big names hanging out at HN? I thought Quora (and occasionally Reddit) attracted the big names. (I'm not complaining. I just thought people of your stature had their own "exclusive" watering holes on the Internet ;)
- ChuckMcM 3y agoI am not a "big name" :-). I am more like the Woody Allen character who shows up in the crowd at a lot of famous events with famous people. And to clarify, I did not work at PARC, my wife worked as Xerox Business Systems which was co-located with PARC and there was a lot of intermingling. I was at Intel when we moved here, then joined Sun.
- DougMerritt 3y agoYou're overly humble Chuck. ;)
- da02 3y agoIntel and Sun? Oh man. Hopefully, the battle scars have healed by now.
- toyg 3y agoDoes anyone even go on Quora anymore...? I thought it was spammed to death.
- da02 3y agoAnd stuffed with ads too.
- conradfr 3y agoThere's a lot of big names on HN. Alan Kay commented here before and even did an AMA.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]