From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 13889 invoked from network); 19 Jan 2023 17:50:25 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 19 Jan 2023 17:50:25 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 99DAD4247C; Fri, 20 Jan 2023 03:50:19 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mercury.lcs.mit.edu (mercury.lcs.mit.edu [18.26.0.122]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 06A864247B for ; Fri, 20 Jan 2023 03:50:14 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11178) id E7E7E18C074; Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:50:12 -0500 (EST) To: tuhs@tuhs.org Message-Id: <20230119175012.E7E7E18C074@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:50:12 -0500 (EST) From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Message-ID-Hash: 3A2Y3WTQYSZ4LKRWG5NXALVNFJYIHNCI X-Message-ID-Hash: 3A2Y3WTQYSZ4LKRWG5NXALVNFJYIHNCI X-MailFrom: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Managers/architects (was: AIX moved into maintainance mode) List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: > From: Larry McVoy > At least 30 years ago I said "He's good programmer, a good architect, > and a good manager. I've never seen that in one person before". Corby? Although he was just down the hall from me, I never saw him operating in any of those roles; maybe some of the old-time Unix people have some insight. Saltzer is about off-scale in #2; probably good as a manager (although I had a monumental blow-up with him in the hallway on the 5th floor, but I was pretty close to unmanageable when I was young ;-); he took over Athena when it was stumbling, and got it going. Dave Clark is high on all three - he could manage me! :-) Bob Taylor? PARC did some _incredibly_ important stuff in his time. Yes, I know a lot of the credit goes to those under him (Butler Lampson, Alan Kay - not sure if he was in Taylor's group, Boggs, Metcalfe, etc) but he had to manage them all. Not sure what his technical role was, though. Vint Cerf? Again, A1*** as a manager, but had some failings as a architect. I think the biggest share of the blame for the decision to remove the variable size addresses from TCP/IP3, and replace them with 32-bit addresses in TCP/IPv4, goes to him. (Alas, I was down the hall, not in the room, that day; I wasn't allowed in until the _next_ meeting. I like to think that if I'd been there, I could/would have pointed out the 'obvious' superior alternative - 'only length 4 must be supported at this time'.) Noel PS: ISTR that about a month ago someone was asking for management papers from that era (but I was too busy to reply); two good ones are: - F. J. Corbat??, C. T. Clingen, "A Managerial View of the Multics System Development" https://multicians.org/managerial.html - F. J. Corbat??, C. T. Clingen, and J. H. Saltzer, "Multics -- the first seven years" https://multicians.org/f7y.html