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* [TUHS] Re: Managers/architects (was: AIX moved into maintainance mode)
@ 2023-01-19 21:30 Douglas McIlroy
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Douglas McIlroy @ 2023-01-19 21:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

> 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

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Managers/architects (was: AIX moved into maintainance mode)
@ 2023-01-19 17:50 Noel Chiappa
  2023-01-19 18:00 ` [TUHS] " Marc Donner
  2023-01-19 21:12 ` Lawrence Stewart
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2023-01-19 17:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>

    > 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

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread

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2023-01-19 21:30 [TUHS] Re: Managers/architects (was: AIX moved into maintainance mode) Douglas McIlroy
  -- 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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