4 ms·

Erik Naggum, RIP (2009)

57 points by KC8ZKF 12y ago

rurban 12y ago
Oh that's nice. I sat with Kent and Eric at the very same Lisp conference in Berkeley at the very same dinner table, Eric was just elected as some sort of community spokesman, which was odd but nice, and he was the nicest person. He was never arrogant. We always respected him, because he was mostly right in his endless and beautiful posts to comp.lang.lisp. He used the emacs news reader with block aligned paragraphs. But it was also a bit threatening to newbies, because he easily lost his control with them. I rarely dared to ask something. Similar to other famous figures in SW mailinglists. I know of 2 others, who I also highly respect. Just because they were always right and their code was beautiful. His posts were so famous, someone even made a searchable archive out of it: http://xach.com/naggum/articles/ http://xach.com/naggum/articles/ #<Erik> -- sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from irony
- e40 12y ago
  But it was also a bit threatening to newbies, because he easily lost his control with them. I rarely dared to ask something. It wasn't just newbies. He came across like a completely different person in email vs live and in person. I never once saw him lose his cool in front of someone. I saw it many, many times in public and private email. As an aside, it's always strange to click on a link on some random site and see a photo I took.
  - mcphage 12y ago
    > He came across like a completely different person in email vs live and in person. I never once saw him lose his cool in front of someone. I saw it many, many times in public and private email. If someone is pleasant in person, yet crass or cruel online—but 99% of our interaction with them is online—then I think their online persona is the real them, and their pleasant in-person demeanor is the fake.
    - DougMerritt 12y ago
      How do you know it's not the other way around, at least part of the time? It's well-known that people are generally multifaceted, and that, typically, different circumstances bring out different facets -- that's more general than the online/offline issue. I never met Naggum in person, only online, so I have no personal theory about him.
      - mcphage 12y ago
        > How do you know it's not the other way around, at least part of the time? It's not so much, 'how do you know?' as 'what difference does it make?'? If almost all of your encounters with them are cruel, the fact that they're kind offline is irrelevant. Most of the targets of their cruelty won't ever meet them offline, and so will only be exposed to their cruelty. Although if you think about it, what sounds more believable—a genuinely nice person who spends most of their time treating people cruelly, or a nasty person who is afraid to show it when they have to face the target of their cruelty?
    - Arnt 12y ago
      I met Erik several times and was told off by him on Usenet, also several times. Both were the real him. Which may defy logic a tiny little bit, but human personalities aren't really bound by logic.
      - engi_nerd 12y ago
        I have been mad as hell at a colleague, and we've had it out in a lengthy, heated argument. Then when work hours were over, we would go hang out and forget it all. Just because we have contentious argument doesn't mean we don't like each other.
    - e40 12y ago
      I agree this is a possibility, but I don't think it was the case for Erik. I think he viewed electronic communication as a different form of communication that had different rules. I also think he fell into a trap of bad behavior and he wasn't able to disconnect from it. Years before he died he disconnected from comp.lang.lisp. That seemed to be the only way he could change, and it meant not participating in conversations there.
- jdonaldson 12y ago
  I went through the articles with an open mind. I know this is going to be an unpopular sentiment here... but, to be honest they don't give a good impression of him in my mind. I think it's just really a bad idea to have a large part of your legacy defined in usenet posts. Here's his xml rant people pointed me to: http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html XML is great but it's not exactly the deep end of the pool. I honestly don't understand why someone with his intelligence would bother with something like that if it generated such negativity. Finally, at the end of the day, I think XML defined Erik Naggum more than the other way around.
  - rurban 12y ago
    The SGML/XML rant is a classic topic of his, and he ranted about it constantly. And lisp was the perfect forum for this. Everybody was with him on this. But you need to know some context: Before the simple WWW there was the better web, with consistent client editing tools (Amadeus), where all your links and pages were in (HTP Hyper Text Protocol) database. The server part had builtin search, was stateful (sessions), and was overall just better. The markup language to create those new rich formats (i.e. with links and media) was lisp based (DSSSL), and formatted down to the stupid formats we know now. Everybody thought who can you be so stupid to reinvent the wheel in such an insane way. But insanity prevailed, as usual. The machines and SW environment were rich and good, he had a Sparc, and not so simple as the typical Windows 3 environment, That's the world which was destroyed by the web (stateless simple servers without any features, stupid clients, stupid inconsistent "loose" markup) and its new language XML. The technical SGML and XML groups were considered the problem of the whole IT industry to Eric. LISP expressions were not only superior, condense, readable, we also had all the tools already to work with them. XML was a huge throwback. It was a political battle we lost. That's why he loved to go on and on like this on every occasion, when ever he found someone who seemed to be fond of the web, html, xml or those likes. Those stupid people destroyed our better LISP world.
  - mcphage 12y ago
    > to be honest they don't give a good impression of him in my mind He was a bully. An incredibly intelligent bully, who liked to pick on people he felt he was smarter than. And in most cases, he probably actually was smarter than them, which made it feel justified in his mind.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
tptacek 12y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672582
comrade1 12y ago
Since this is posted here is it a sign that HN is going to get some edge? It's probably too much to hope for... I'm sure we'll continue to be subject to the same wimpy upvoters/downvoters we've always been subject to... This place could use some open criticism and degradation. Any criticism of ridiculous start-ups or bad science is criticized for not being open-minded, for ridiculing someone's life's work. Well, sometimes it's deserved.
- SamReidHughes 12y ago
  There's criticism and then there's "criticism." I see plenty of criticism of ridiculous startups and bad science and bad articles here so I don't know what you're getting at. See for example the recent Bengali unicode thread. But usually if a thing has obvious criticisms then there's no point in people stomping on that, it's just dumb and obvious and nobody cares to read the unneedful.
  - batemanesque 12y ago
    yes, HN is truly exemplary in its rigorous self-examination
- DanBC 12y ago
  I never understand the confusion between "criticism" and "rudeness". There is already too much rudeness and this should be downvoted (and flagged if needed). It's weird to call such downvoting wimpy.
gcv 12y ago
I miss Erik. comp.lang.lisp was the last newsgroup I followed when USENET went into its tailspin, and I gave up on it when he left. He was an incredible teacher for those who listened.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
et2o 12y ago
It is quite rare to die from ulcerative colitis. I am curious as to what the fatal complications were.
- rurban 12y ago
  A very special high school friend of mine also died of this. He was super intelligent, a very depressive computer hacker, very insecure with other people, almost never left his room after high school and that's how he died eventually. Alone in his room. He wouldn't go to visit a doctor or call someone or tell anyone.

57 points by KC8ZKF 12y ago

Oh that's nice. I sat with Kent and Eric at the very same Lisp conference in Berkeley at the very same dinner table, Eric was just elected as some sort of community spokesman, which was odd but nice, and he was the nicest person. He was never arrogant. We always respected him, because he was mostly right in his endless and beautiful posts to comp.lang.lisp. He used the emacs news reader with block aligned paragraphs. But it was also a bit threatening to newbies, because he easily lost his control with them. I rarely dared to ask something. Similar to other famous figures in SW mailinglists. I know of 2 others, who I also highly respect. Just because they were always right and their code was beautiful. His posts were so famous, someone even made a searchable archive out of it: http://xach.com/naggum/articles/ http://xach.com/naggum/articles/ #<Erik> -- sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from irony

e40 12y ago
But it was also a bit threatening to newbies, because he easily lost his control with them. I rarely dared to ask something. It wasn't just newbies. He came across like a completely different person in email vs live and in person. I never once saw him lose his cool in front of someone. I saw it many, many times in public and private email. As an aside, it's always strange to click on a link on some random site and see a photo I took.
- mcphage 12y ago
  > He came across like a completely different person in email vs live and in person. I never once saw him lose his cool in front of someone. I saw it many, many times in public and private email. If someone is pleasant in person, yet crass or cruel online—but 99% of our interaction with them is online—then I think their online persona is the real them, and their pleasant in-person demeanor is the fake.
  - DougMerritt 12y ago
    How do you know it's not the other way around, at least part of the time? It's well-known that people are generally multifaceted, and that, typically, different circumstances bring out different facets -- that's more general than the online/offline issue. I never met Naggum in person, only online, so I have no personal theory about him.
    - mcphage 12y ago
      > How do you know it's not the other way around, at least part of the time? It's not so much, 'how do you know?' as 'what difference does it make?'? If almost all of your encounters with them are cruel, the fact that they're kind offline is irrelevant. Most of the targets of their cruelty won't ever meet them offline, and so will only be exposed to their cruelty. Although if you think about it, what sounds more believable—a genuinely nice person who spends most of their time treating people cruelly, or a nasty person who is afraid to show it when they have to face the target of their cruelty?
  - Arnt 12y ago
    I met Erik several times and was told off by him on Usenet, also several times. Both were the real him. Which may defy logic a tiny little bit, but human personalities aren't really bound by logic.
    - engi_nerd 12y ago
      I have been mad as hell at a colleague, and we've had it out in a lengthy, heated argument. Then when work hours were over, we would go hang out and forget it all. Just because we have contentious argument doesn't mean we don't like each other.
  - e40 12y ago
    I agree this is a possibility, but I don't think it was the case for Erik. I think he viewed electronic communication as a different form of communication that had different rules. I also think he fell into a trap of bad behavior and he wasn't able to disconnect from it. Years before he died he disconnected from comp.lang.lisp. That seemed to be the only way he could change, and it meant not participating in conversations there.
jdonaldson 12y ago
I went through the articles with an open mind. I know this is going to be an unpopular sentiment here... but, to be honest they don't give a good impression of him in my mind. I think it's just really a bad idea to have a large part of your legacy defined in usenet posts. Here's his xml rant people pointed me to: http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html XML is great but it's not exactly the deep end of the pool. I honestly don't understand why someone with his intelligence would bother with something like that if it generated such negativity. Finally, at the end of the day, I think XML defined Erik Naggum more than the other way around.
- rurban 12y ago
  The SGML/XML rant is a classic topic of his, and he ranted about it constantly. And lisp was the perfect forum for this. Everybody was with him on this. But you need to know some context: Before the simple WWW there was the better web, with consistent client editing tools (Amadeus), where all your links and pages were in (HTP Hyper Text Protocol) database. The server part had builtin search, was stateful (sessions), and was overall just better. The markup language to create those new rich formats (i.e. with links and media) was lisp based (DSSSL), and formatted down to the stupid formats we know now. Everybody thought who can you be so stupid to reinvent the wheel in such an insane way. But insanity prevailed, as usual. The machines and SW environment were rich and good, he had a Sparc, and not so simple as the typical Windows 3 environment, That's the world which was destroyed by the web (stateless simple servers without any features, stupid clients, stupid inconsistent "loose" markup) and its new language XML. The technical SGML and XML groups were considered the problem of the whole IT industry to Eric. LISP expressions were not only superior, condense, readable, we also had all the tools already to work with them. XML was a huge throwback. It was a political battle we lost. That's why he loved to go on and on like this on every occasion, when ever he found someone who seemed to be fond of the web, html, xml or those likes. Those stupid people destroyed our better LISP world.
- mcphage 12y ago
  > to be honest they don't give a good impression of him in my mind He was a bully. An incredibly intelligent bully, who liked to pick on people he felt he was smarter than. And in most cases, he probably actually was smarter than them, which made it feel justified in his mind.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

tptacek 12y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672582

comrade1 12y ago

Since this is posted here is it a sign that HN is going to get some edge? It's probably too much to hope for... I'm sure we'll continue to be subject to the same wimpy upvoters/downvoters we've always been subject to... This place could use some open criticism and degradation. Any criticism of ridiculous start-ups or bad science is criticized for not being open-minded, for ridiculing someone's life's work. Well, sometimes it's deserved.

SamReidHughes 12y ago
There's criticism and then there's "criticism." I see plenty of criticism of ridiculous startups and bad science and bad articles here so I don't know what you're getting at. See for example the recent Bengali unicode thread. But usually if a thing has obvious criticisms then there's no point in people stomping on that, it's just dumb and obvious and nobody cares to read the unneedful.
- batemanesque 12y ago
  yes, HN is truly exemplary in its rigorous self-examination
DanBC 12y ago
I never understand the confusion between "criticism" and "rudeness". There is already too much rudeness and this should be downvoted (and flagged if needed). It's weird to call such downvoting wimpy.

gcv 12y ago

I miss Erik. comp.lang.lisp was the last newsgroup I followed when USENET went into its tailspin, and I gave up on it when he left. He was an incredible teacher for those who listened.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

et2o 12y ago

It is quite rare to die from ulcerative colitis. I am curious as to what the fatal complications were.

rurban 12y ago
A very special high school friend of mine also died of this. He was super intelligent, a very depressive computer hacker, very insecure with other people, almost never left his room after high school and that's how he died eventually. Alone in his room. He wouldn't go to visit a doctor or call someone or tell anyone.