
Leslie Lamport awarded Turing Award - rctay89
http://www.acm.org/news/featured/awards/turing-award-2013
======
merloen
This paper is a classic: Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a
Distributed System:
[http://www.ics.uci.edu/~cs230/reading/time.pdf](http://www.ics.uci.edu/~cs230/reading/time.pdf)

~~~
wicknicks
The above link is a summary to the paper. Here is the actual publication:
[http://cnlab.kaist.ac.kr/~ikjun/data/Course_work/CS642-Distr...](http://cnlab.kaist.ac.kr/~ikjun/data/Course_work/CS642-Distributed_Systems/papers/lamport1978.pdf)

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Monkeyget
Clock, Byzantine general, Paxos, LaTeX, program proof. My CS curriculum often
crossed Leslie Lamport's path.

Here is an interview he did a while ago which go trough his work :
[http://www.budiu.info/blog/2007/05/03/an-interview-with-
lesl...](http://www.budiu.info/blog/2007/05/03/an-interview-with-leslie-
lamport/)

~~~
infruset
Quote from that interview:

>Q: The Byzantine Generals Problem paper (1982) describes the first provably
correct algorithm for making several computers agree when some of them may
give deliberate wrong answers. What are the its practical applications?

>A: The only practical applications I know of are in real-time process control
— in particular, for systems that fly airplanes.

I guess Bitcoin didn't exist at the time..

~~~
adultSwim
"People fiercely resist any effort to make them change what they do. Given how
bad they are at writing programs, one might naively expect programmers to be
eager to try new approaches. But human psychology doesn’t work that way, and
instead programmers will find any excuse to dismiss an approach that would
require them to learn something new. On the other hand, they are quick to
embrace the latest fad (extreme programming, templates, etc.) that requires
only superficial changes and allows them to continue doing things basically
the same as before. In this context, it is only fair to mention that people
working in the area of verification are no less human than programmers, and
they also are very reluctant to change what they do just because it isn’t
working."

This is an excerpt from an answer about program verification. It's worth the
read.

------
michael_nielsen
I like that the full news release ([http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-
releases/2014/turing-awar...](http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-
releases/2014/turing-award-13) ) comes as both HTML and a PDF built with ---
wait for it! --- LaTeX.

~~~
ygra
If the HTML was built with LaTeX they should really rewrite that part.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
It currently says "PDF file generated with LaTeX".

Edit: Misread what you wrote. I think only the PDF was made using LaTeX, not
the HTML.

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scott_s
What took so long? And, come on, you have to at least _mention_ Latex.

edit: they do, on a more full citation:
[http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/lamport_1205376.cfm](http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/lamport_1205376.cfm)

~~~
bcantrill
What took so long, indeed. As long as I have been associated with the ACM on
behalf of the practitioner, I have complained about this to anyone and
everyone. Many thought he had already won (!) and a few believed that he
didn't deserve to win because he is "merely a popularizer" (!!), and some
(rightfully, probably) encouraged me to inject myself in the process if I felt
so strongly about it. There was no way I was going to do that, so I had
resigned myself to a lifetime of merely complaining about it. I was elated to
discover this morning that my complaining has been cut short, and that Lamport
has won the award that is long overdue to him!

------
hatred
It's quite ironic that most of the world knows him for LaTeX and not for the
zillion fundamental contributions he has made to Distributed Systems.

Truly well deserved. #Respect

~~~
jcheng
I'm embarrassed to include myself among the ignorant masses--I just assumed
this was for his work on LaTeX. The distributed systems stuff sounds much more
interesting though. Looks like I have some reading to do!

[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html)

~~~
jackowayed
Yep. Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System is cited
in basically every distributed systems paper ever, and the ideas in it are
behind, among other things, Amazon's Dynamo.

It's also fairly accessible. One of the first systems papers I read, and while
I certainly felt in over my head, I got the high level ideas

~~~
lclarkmichalek
For me, the timing could not have been better; I'm to write and present a
summary of that paper this week. It's an excellent paper, and while I am
probably wrong, it feels like it defines the vocabulary for talking about time
in computer systems. The very first episode of Star Trek: DS9 comes to mind;
Captain Benjamin Sisco has met an alien species that does not exist in our
system of linear time. Sisco cannot explain 'time' to the creature as he sees
it as an innate part of communication. It is my belief that he would have a
much better chance, had he read this paper.

------
JoshTriplett
As with Donald Knuth, it's hard to say whether his most high-impact
contribution was to computing and algorithms or to typesetting; certainly the
latter is even more widely used.

Well deserved for both.

~~~
robotresearcher
"...certainly the latter is even more widely used"

There are lots of LaTeX users no doubt, but Lamport's work on the fundamentals
of distributed systems informs the design all the large-scale systems relied
on by billions of people.

Lamport's analysis of the limitations of time in distributed systems, and the
Logical Clock construct to help with that is way more impactful than LaTeX.

------
donniezazen
There is something intriguing about these old timers' plain text html
websites. One of these days I am going to have to drop WordPress.

~~~
teach
My blog[0] is still plain HTML, but that's part of the reason I haven't made
an update since late 2012(!).

Thinking about switching to a blogging platform myself. Or at least something
that converts markdown to static HTML with git-commit hooks.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "Be careful what you wish for."

[0] [http://grahammitchell.com/](http://grahammitchell.com/)

~~~
elbear
Have a look at Pelican, one of the many solutions in this space.
[http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.3.0/](http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.3.0/)

------
dr_faustus
While his work on distributed computing was certainly great, I find it curious
that the press release doesn't even mention the achievement of Lamport that
probably was important to lot more people: The creation of LaTeX. Sure, its
not something typically honored by the Turing Award but leaving it out
entirely? Come on!

~~~
rosche
Well, LaTeX is a (slight) improvement over TeX, which was written by D Knuth.
I don't think that is what they would give a Turing Award to someone for.

~~~
cschmidt
Sure, but I saw the headline and though "Oh, the guy who wrote the LaTex
book".

[http://www.amazon.com/LaTeX-Document-Preparation-
System-2nd/...](http://www.amazon.com/LaTeX-Document-Preparation-
System-2nd/dp/0201529831)

I imagine that is how he is best known. I didn't even know he did LaTex, just
the book.

~~~
jgreen10
Perhaps in terms of quantity, but to many he is the man who single-handedly
brought order to distributed systems. I was surprised he had not won a Turing
award yet.

------
jacquesm
For an idea of the tremendous impact Leslie Lamport has had on computing to
date check out this page:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html)

------
curiousDog
About time too! This man is responsible for most of our progress in
distributed systems. One of the few researchers Google hasn't poached from
Microsoft yet.

~~~
derekchiang
Not sure why you seem to think researchers are flowing to Google. Microsoft
Research is still the biggest name in distributed systems, if not CS in
general. They have been consistently producing high-quality papers [1].

[1]
[http://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards.html](http://jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards.html)

~~~
mehrdada
I do believe there is a flow of Systems researchers towards Google, at least
from academia, if not Microsoft Research. I

Microsoft Research is active in many more areas of research than Google.
However, I'm not sure that implies they are better than Google in the specific
area of distributed systems research. FWIW, it seems every now and then Google
publishes incredible papers that surprises folks in that community.

------
amaks
Well deserved. His work on Paxos flavors worth it alone.

------
general_failure
I have to admit that I had no clue this man invented latex. But we studied
Lamport clocks and lots of his papers on distributed systems.

------
nealabq
Congratulations to Dr Lamport.

Is there a list of Turing Award nominees published somewhere?

~~~
middleclick
[http://amturing.acm.org/byyear.cfm](http://amturing.acm.org/byyear.cfm)

~~~
adharmad
Interestingly, Brian Kerninghan and Christos Papadimitriou have not received
the award yet.

~~~
nealabq
I'm wondering if they've been considered. Other names that come to mind:

Linus Torvalds

Richard Stallman

Guido van Rossum

Simon Peyton Jones

Andy Tanenbaum

John Resig

Tim Berners-Lee

Satoshi Nakamoto

~~~
harrycarrington
What contributions to computer science research has van Rossum, Stallman or
Torvalds made? It's not an engineering award, it's a research award.

------
ChuckMcM
This was very well deserved. Leslie has been one of my heroes ever since I
came across his work while trying to write a functional lock manager for NFS.
It was clear and very approachable.

------
grondilu
I'm confused. Is he the Leslie Lamport I'm thinking of, the one who created
LaTeX? If so, I'm very surprised to learn that he works for Microsoft.

~~~
pjscott
Microsoft _Research_ is one of the best CS research labs in the world.

------
quarterwave
A special mention must be made about the puns in the LaTeX book, like the
letter sample written from Gnu York.

------
dude_abides
Wow I would have thought he won it in the 80s or 90s!

~~~
suyash
I think the follow to 'Hall of Fame' inductions style, recognize the
contribution much later in the career or post-retirement.

------
sriram_malhar
Finally!

~~~
gahahaha
Your exclamation is probably not a reference to Gert Fylking [1], but it would
be hilarious if it was.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Fylking#Radio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Fylking#Radio)

------
leephillips
(In June, 2013.)

~~~
fournm
The award for 2013 is being given in June 2014, it was only announced today --
[http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2014/turing-
awar...](http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2014/turing-award-13)

