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.
The archives to the mailing list are private, so I can't link. You can see in the wikipedia history that who ever made the edit claims to have received word from McCarthy's sister.
Yes.One of the more exciting things about computer science, a few decades ago, is that it was all brand new. Even the pioneers were contemporaries. These were exciting times to live in, since it made me feel like we were on the edge of a brand new technology.
But now, the pioneers have gotten old. And the excitement is slowly ebbing away.
With all these great minds from our field passing away, I'm beginning to think we should pause for a moment and think what we could do to thank all those legendary computing figures still with us? Knuth, Kernighan and Woz come to mind, certainly there are a lot more.
For a fun portrait of McCarthy's early life and aspirations, see the passages about him in "What the Doormouse Said". [1]
- Born to communist activists in 1920s Boston
- Studied math with John Nash at Princeton
- Organized the first computer-chess match in 1965, pitting his own algorithm against one created by computer scientists in the USSR, with moves communicated by telegraph.
While many will remember him for Lisp and his contributions to AI, perhaps equally important was his role in running a research lab in what became a characteristic West Coast fashion: finding intelligent people, setting them free to do what they wanted, and obdurately arguing with them over very little provocation. He was far enough from mainstream to be familiar, and even sympathetic to the 60s counterculture, but also cynical enough to embrace technology, rather than revolution, as a way forward. If this sounds a bit like running a startup today, there's one main reason it does: John McCarthy.
Whether or not he has passed; if anyone has the book and fancies spending a little time adding interesting material to the WP article about him, that would be nice :)
I confess that when the news about Dennis Ritchie was posted, I immediately flashed to the thought, "who's number three?"
Thing is, so did a lot of other people, and tagging John McCarthy's WP page in this way would be just the sort of prank/hoax that would inspire. So the "deaths come in threes" aphorism makes me more suspicious of this, not less.
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.
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.
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]]]]
Agreed. I did a quick Google News search and turned up nothing. Could be legit, or vandalism, but there's really no way to know until we have confirmation.
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--EDIT-- Since I wrote this, I've seen one source appear, in Portuguese[1]. It's still unclear whether this story is legitimate, or if they simply copied wikipedia / the buzz surrounding the story.
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--EDIT 2-- Globo is apparently the largest media conglomerate in South America[2] and thus unlikely to publish unsourced stories, so this looks (sadly) to be true.
Ok, come on. Both here and on Wikipedia people are posting links to blog posts or minor news sites that supposedly "support" the claim. But these are clearly instigated by the original Wikipedia edit itself, so that they don't provide any additional proof.
"So she joined the group to climb Annapurna, and was part of the second team to attempt the summit. You go up in pairs, so you do pairwise summit attempts - these Himalayan style things where you do base camps. So she was working her way to the upper camp as the first summit team was coming down between the topmost and the second topmost. They passed, and then she was lost - she and her partner were lost. We're quite sure they fell. They were roped together; we think one fell and took the other with them."
As I was reading that I was thinking, 'why twos? that's not enough to anchor someone if they fall through an ice crevice or something, need at least three for that.' And then I get to the end, and that's exactly what happened. I wonder if people still attempt Himalayan mountains in twos like that.
Crevasses are normally encountered during glacier travel. These aren't particularly common on steep slopes.
Moreover, climbing as a trio tends to be (much) slower than traveling as a pair. When weather and hypoxia are your biggest threat, speed can literally be the only thing keeping you alive.
</climber notes="got sick around 4100m, big wimp">
"(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.
It [edit: the Brazilian article] cites Steven Levy, senior writer of Wired, as the source. It does not say where the source is found, but I assume it's this tweet:
He may be a writer for Wired, but he doesn't seem to have a solid source either.
EDIT: There seems to be someone that claims Stanford has confirmed it by phone, as you can see in the Discussion page of Wikipedia, though:
"I spoke to the Associate Director of Communications at Stanford School of Engineering, and Dan Stober of Stanford News Service. Both have confirmed that Professor McCarthy passed away this weekend. They both said there were not a lot of details available at this time. An obituary will be issued by Stanford soon. http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320 -- I apologize for bad formatting. I'm not a regular Wiki editor. Joseph Chiu 24 October 2011, 2:11 PDT. I have not edited the article page."
I reverted it again. I feel terrible doing that but the alternative is sourcing our article from personal communications or a tweet. Have yet to see a reference which is reliable (in the wikipedia sense) or not ultimately derived from the original edit to wikipedia.
229 comments
[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 325 ms ] threadSad, sad, sad day. :(
Thanks anyway - I am sure it will appear in time.
Usually stuff like this is legit; but sometimes it isn't. So the policy is to have a reliable source or nothing.
"I just received news that John McCarthy passed away in his sleep a few hours ago; he was at home."
But now, the pioneers have gotten old. And the excitement is slowly ebbing away.
What an amazing pioneer. He will be missed.
- Born to communist activists in 1920s Boston
- Studied math with John Nash at Princeton
- Organized the first computer-chess match in 1965, pitting his own algorithm against one created by computer scientists in the USSR, with moves communicated by telegraph.
While many will remember him for Lisp and his contributions to AI, perhaps equally important was his role in running a research lab in what became a characteristic West Coast fashion: finding intelligent people, setting them free to do what they wanted, and obdurately arguing with them over very little provocation. He was far enough from mainstream to be familiar, and even sympathetic to the 60s counterculture, but also cynical enough to embrace technology, rather than revolution, as a way forward. If this sounds a bit like running a startup today, there's one main reason it does: John McCarthy.
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&lpg=PT113&...
It's almost depressing to see the same problems we keep (re-)solving have had great minds beating on them for quite a while now :)
http://www.pelicancrossing.net/credits.htm
I think we will have to wait for confirmation, but not long.
We should propose National Computing Month or something for October.
> "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."
Thing is, so did a lot of other people, and tagging John McCarthy's WP page in this way would be just the sort of prank/hoax that would inspire. So the "deaths come in threes" aphorism makes me more suspicious of this, not less.
FTFY
(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.
With M-expressions, this would look like: he[will[be[dearly[missed]]]]
Basically, I have a spoonful of salt to hand.
This might be a good way to make people read about this kind of person.
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--EDIT-- Since I wrote this, I've seen one source appear, in Portuguese[1]. It's still unclear whether this story is legitimate, or if they simply copied wikipedia / the buzz surrounding the story.
-
--EDIT 2-- Globo is apparently the largest media conglomerate in South America[2] and thus unlikely to publish unsourced stories, so this looks (sadly) to be true.
[1] http://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2011/10/morre-john-mc...
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizações_Globo
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Vera.h...
"So she joined the group to climb Annapurna, and was part of the second team to attempt the summit. You go up in pairs, so you do pairwise summit attempts - these Himalayan style things where you do base camps. So she was working her way to the upper camp as the first summit team was coming down between the topmost and the second topmost. They passed, and then she was lost - she and her partner were lost. We're quite sure they fell. They were roped together; we think one fell and took the other with them."
As I was reading that I was thinking, 'why twos? that's not enough to anchor someone if they fall through an ice crevice or something, need at least three for that.' And then I get to the end, and that's exactly what happened. I wonder if people still attempt Himalayan mountains in twos like that.
Moreover, climbing as a trio tends to be (much) slower than traveling as a pair. When weather and hypoxia are your biggest threat, speed can literally be the only thing keeping you alive.
</climber notes="got sick around 4100m, big wimp">
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."
http://twitter.com/#!/stevenjayl/status/128568370055491584
He may be a writer for Wired, but he doesn't seem to have a solid source either.
EDIT: There seems to be someone that claims Stanford has confirmed it by phone, as you can see in the Discussion page of Wikipedia, though:
"I spoke to the Associate Director of Communications at Stanford School of Engineering, and Dan Stober of Stanford News Service. Both have confirmed that Professor McCarthy passed away this weekend. They both said there were not a lot of details available at this time. An obituary will be issued by Stanford soon. http://chime.in/user/toybuilder/chime/65979187159736320 -- I apologize for bad formatting. I'm not a regular Wiki editor. Joseph Chiu 24 October 2011, 2:11 PDT. I have not edited the article page."
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...