Its tough this guy was such a legend and so I thought "Creator of Rapid Application Development" would probably pique most people's interests amongst Hacker News' demographic.
I had also considered this:
Largest Benefactor to Oxford University, Dr. James Martin, dies at 79
Hi, this is a small nit about your comment: You say "... $100MM+ ..." but how is that different than "... $100M+ ..." ? If it's not different, then why double the "M"? Thanks! (Perhaps it's just a typo.)
Different areas have different conventions, leading to some confusion. Finance uses MM for a million, the physical sciences use M. In the the finance case 'M' comes from the Latin 'mille', meaning thousand, so MM means thousand thousand. In the sciences M means Mega (from the Greek meaning 'Great'), which is the SI prefix for 10^6
I know your comment is well intentioned but it still rubs me the wrong way so I apologize if I offend you in any way since that is not really my point.
It feels wrong to tell the web master that he should modify the website to pay tribute to somebody you think is important (whether true or not I'm not sure it is really relevant). Especially considering that I myself do not know who the guy is and yet I've been in the field for 10 years (call me stupid).
The whole comment feels quite presumptuous. Honoring Aaron Swartz seemed like a no brainer but other than that is it really OK to put PG on the spot. What happens if he decides not to do it, will you think of him badly?
In my experience, whenever a death in the industry makes the frontpage of HN, the black banner has come out. I don't think it's terribly presumptuous to bring it up. I won't hold any ill will toward pg or the rest of the HN mods if they decide he wasn't significant enough or close enough to the HN community or whatever.
I just read his selected bibliography on wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Martin_(author)#Publicat... ) and I somehow never realized that all these foundational works of computer science were written by the same guy. "Design of real time computer systems" in particular is part of the bedrock of modern computing.
We referenced that book heavily back when we were building a real-time medical data acquisition system. I still remember some of the charts from it. Like optimizing for lowest disk latency.
I'm really sad to hear about this. Dr Martin was an amazing man. His work helped change our world, but few people have heard of him.
Most of all, I respect his philanthropy. He cared about cost-effective philanthropy. He focused on the most important problems facing humanity -- I think he more or less bankrolled the field of existential risk research.
His donation to Oxford funded some of my early postgraduate work back in 2009.
I actually had an opportunity to meet with him a couple of weeks after I began the work, but not knowing who he was (or being particularly computer-history savy at the time) I didn't push it. In hindsight (not just today, but generally) I've always regretted not realizing who he was at the time.
This is terrible, sad news. "The Wired Society" is a milestone in technology writing—James Martin predicted today's world with eerie prescience, all the way back in the 1970s. I read that book as a child, and I still go back to it and marvel at how right he was.
Rest in peace, Dr. Martin. You made a dent in the world.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadCreator of Rapid Application Development, Dr James Martin, dies at 79
Amazing that he was able to buy his own island and donate $100MM+ to Oxford University.
I had also considered this:
Largest Benefactor to Oxford University, Dr. James Martin, dies at 79
Computing Legend, Dr. James Martin, dies at 79
Truly a legend.
Dr. Martin will be missed.
It feels wrong to tell the web master that he should modify the website to pay tribute to somebody you think is important (whether true or not I'm not sure it is really relevant). Especially considering that I myself do not know who the guy is and yet I've been in the field for 10 years (call me stupid).
The whole comment feels quite presumptuous. Honoring Aaron Swartz seemed like a no brainer but other than that is it really OK to put PG on the spot. What happens if he decides not to do it, will you think of him badly?
Most of all, I respect his philanthropy. He cared about cost-effective philanthropy. He focused on the most important problems facing humanity -- I think he more or less bankrolled the field of existential risk research.
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/
Anyway, RIP Doc!
I actually had an opportunity to meet with him a couple of weeks after I began the work, but not knowing who he was (or being particularly computer-history savy at the time) I didn't push it. In hindsight (not just today, but generally) I've always regretted not realizing who he was at the time.
Also (from a comment in the article) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9JUmFWn7t4 is an interview with the man himself and http://www.jamesmartin.com/film/ a longer video.
Rest in peace, Dr. Martin. You made a dent in the world.
What?