John McCarthy Has Died • Hacker News Board

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#61

Post by cconroy » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:50 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #56

kinghajj wrote: post #17

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

You should put more effort into your Lisp parody.

((not (parody?)) 'homage)

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#62

Post by lukeschlather » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:52 PM UTC

kinghajj wrote: post #57

pjscott wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It 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.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#63

Post by edu » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 8:55 PM UTC

I'll cross my fingers and hope it's just a hoax of really, really, really bad taste.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#64

Post by xxcode » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 9:02 PM UTC

I got a call this morning from his daughter that he has died this morning. Sorry to have him go.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#65

Post by tensor » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 9:06 PM UTC

apgwoz wrote: post #2

Does 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. :(

For 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."

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#66

Post by felideon » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

patrickod wrote: post #59

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

How quick would it be added to nndb?

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#67

Post by TheCondor » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

This is selfish... but Dr. Knuth, please oh please pick up the pace a notch and select a side kick to finish your work. Please!

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#68

Post by xxcode » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

wyclif wrote: post #45

Death always comes in threes.

I got a call this morning from his daughter that he has died this morning. Sorry to have him go.

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#69

Post by ColinWright » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

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."

Death date now reinstated. (22:09 BST, 21:09 Zulu)

Re: John McCarthy Has Died

#70

Post by cpr » Mon, Oct 24, 2011, 9:12 PM UTC

TheCondor wrote: post #67

This is selfish... but Dr. Knuth, please oh please pick up the pace a notch and select a side kick to finish your work. Please!

This 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!