From: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
To: TUHS main list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Managers/architects (was: AIX moved into maintainance mode)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2023 16:30:42 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKH6PiVB3mLE-Wi3yYigrbrvSDmrGhuKLxtujAEPh_D9ELmAQg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
> My guess is that Ivan Sutherland probably qualified back when he still
> programmed ... I mean, after all, he invented the linked list in order to
> implement his thesis program (Sketchpad) in about 1960.
I don't know whether Sutherland invented the linked list, but if he
did, it had to be before he worked on sketchpad. I attended a lecture
about Lisp in 1959 in which McCarthy credited list-processing to
IPL-V, whose roots Newell places in 1954. Sketchpad ran on TX 0, which
became operational in 1956.
My nomination for a triple-threat computer guy is Vic Vyssotsky. A
great programmer, he invented the first stream-processing language
(BLODI) and bitwise-parallel dataflow analysis. As an architect, he
invented the single underlying address space for multics. As a
manager, he oversaw the building of and later ran the lab that became
AT&T Research. Finally he founded the DEC Cambridge Lab. He was a
subtle diplomat, too, who more than once engineered reversals of
policy without ruffling feathers.
Relative to linked lists, I remember Vic perceptively touting the then
startling usage J=NEXT(J).in Fortran.
Doug
next reply other threads:[~2023-01-19 21:32 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-01-19 21:30 Douglas McIlroy [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2023-01-19 17:50 [TUHS] " Noel Chiappa
2023-01-19 18:00 ` [TUHS] " Marc Donner
2023-01-19 18:09 ` Charles H Sauer (he/him)
2023-01-20 3:47 ` John Cowan
2023-01-19 21:12 ` Lawrence Stewart
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