John McCarthy Has Died • Hacker News Board

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#51

Post by dchest » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:35 PM UTC

Protonk wrote: post #50

sajid wrote: post #32

Death 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."

That 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.

Thank you.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#52

Post by pjscott » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:35 PM UTC

kinghajj wrote: post #17

(he (will (be (dearly (missed)))))

Whenever 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.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#53

Post by faizanaziz » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:36 PM UTC

Seems like October 2011 has taken the best of tech, each great in their own way... RIP John McCarthy

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#54

Post by rblion » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:37 PM UTC

Visionary. 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."

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#55

Post by pjscott » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:37 PM UTC

huherto wrote: post #30

unexpected wrote: post #13

Steve 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.

Poisson distribution? I wish I knew more probability and statistics to understand why this happens.

The explanation could be simpler than that: you just don't notice when notable deaths don't clump together.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#56

Post by eru » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:38 PM UTC

kinghajj wrote: post #17

(he (will (be (dearly (missed)))))

You should put more effort into your Lisp parody.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#57

Post by kinghajj » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:39 PM UTC

pjscott wrote: post #52

kinghajj wrote: post #17

(he (will (be (dearly (missed)))))

Whenever 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.

I thought about doing something like that, but decided against it. I'm expressing condolences, not writing an obituary program!

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#58

Post by DrJokepu » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:40 PM UTC

kinghajj wrote: post #17

(he (will (be (dearly (missed)))))

It's maybe a not very well known fact but McCarthy's original LISP proposal used M-expressions instead of S-expressions; M-expressions were then transformed into S-expressions. Using S-expressions directly, however, turned out to be more popular amongst programmers.

With M-expressions, this would look like: he[will[be[dearly[missed]]]]

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#59

Post by patrickod » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:43 PM UTC

The 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

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#60

Post by getsat » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:44 PM UTC

http://i.imgur.com/Y02DM.jpg

RIP. Thanks for inventing all that awesome stuff modern languages are constantly rediscovering.