3 ms·

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

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.

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.