
Erik Naggum, RIP (2009) - KC8ZKF
http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2009/06/24/erik_naggum_rip
======
rurban
Oh that's nice. I sat with Kent and Eric at the very same Lisp conference in
Berkeley at the very same dinner table, Eric was just elected as some sort of
community spokesman, which was odd but nice, and he was the nicest person. He
was never arrogant.

We always respected him, because he was mostly right in his endless and
beautiful posts to comp.lang.lisp. He used the emacs news reader with block
aligned paragraphs. But it was also a bit threatening to newbies, because he
easily lost his control with them. I rarely dared to ask something. Similar to
other famous figures in SW mailinglists. I know of 2 others, who I also highly
respect. Just because they were always right and their code was beautiful.

His posts were so famous, someone even made a searchable archive out of it:
[http://xach.com/naggum/articles/](http://xach.com/naggum/articles/)

#<Erik>

\-- sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from
irony

~~~
jdonaldson
I went through the articles with an open mind. I know this is going to be an
unpopular sentiment here... but, to be honest they don't give a good
impression of him in my mind.

I think it's just really a bad idea to have a large part of your legacy
defined in usenet posts.

Here's his xml rant people pointed me to:
[http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-
xmlrant.html](http://www.schnada.de/grapt/eriknaggum-xmlrant.html)

XML is great but it's not exactly the deep end of the pool. I honestly don't
understand why someone with his intelligence would bother with something like
that if it generated such negativity.

Finally, at the end of the day, I think XML defined Erik Naggum more than the
other way around.

~~~
rurban
The SGML/XML rant is a classic topic of his, and he ranted about it
constantly. And lisp was the perfect forum for this. Everybody was with him on
this.

But you need to know some context: Before the simple WWW there was the better
web, with consistent client editing tools (Amadeus), where all your links and
pages were in (HTP Hyper Text Protocol) database. The server part had builtin
search, was stateful (sessions), and was overall just better.

The markup language to create those new rich formats (i.e. with links and
media) was lisp based (DSSSL), and formatted down to the stupid formats we
know now. Everybody thought who can you be so stupid to reinvent the wheel in
such an insane way. But insanity prevailed, as usual.

The machines and SW environment were rich and good, he had a Sparc, and not so
simple as the typical Windows 3 environment,

That's the world which was destroyed by the web (stateless simple servers
without any features, stupid clients, stupid inconsistent "loose" markup) and
its new language XML. The technical SGML and XML groups were considered the
problem of the whole IT industry to Eric. LISP expressions were not only
superior, condense, readable, we also had all the tools already to work with
them. XML was a huge throwback. It was a political battle we lost. That's why
he loved to go on and on like this on every occasion, when ever he found
someone who seemed to be fond of the web, html, xml or those likes. Those
stupid people destroyed our better LISP world.

------
gcv
I miss Erik. comp.lang.lisp was the last newsgroup I followed when USENET went
into its tailspin, and I gave up on it when he left. He was an incredible
teacher for those who listened.

------
tptacek
Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672582)

------
et2o
It is quite rare to die from ulcerative colitis. I am curious as to what the
fatal complications were.

~~~
rurban
A very special high school friend of mine also died of this. He was super
intelligent, a very depressive computer hacker, very insecure with other
people, almost never left his room after high school and that's how he died
eventually. Alone in his room. He wouldn't go to visit a doctor or call
someone or tell anyone.

------
comrade1
Since this is posted here is it a sign that HN is going to get some edge? It's
probably too much to hope for... I'm sure we'll continue to be subject to the
same wimpy upvoters/downvoters we've always been subject to...

This place could use some open criticism and degradation. Any criticism of
ridiculous start-ups or bad science is criticized for not being open-minded,
for ridiculing someone's life's work. Well, sometimes it's deserved.

~~~
SamReidHughes
There's criticism and then there's "criticism." I see plenty of criticism of
ridiculous startups and bad science and bad articles here so I don't know what
you're getting at. See for example the recent Bengali unicode thread. But
usually if a thing has _obvious_ criticisms then there's no point in people
stomping on that, it's just dumb and obvious and nobody cares to read the
unneedful.

~~~
batemanesque
yes, HN is truly exemplary in its rigorous self-examination

