Perhaps perversely (or maybe just a reflection of my own middle age?), but the HN black bar is one of my favorite aspects of HN. Death rites are essential, but their significance is often lost on the young who (naturally) pervade tech; what HN has developed in the black bar is really perfect.
Anyway: I trust we're just seeing natural human latency here, but this clearly merits the HN black bar. RIP, Nik Wirth -- truly one of the giants, and someone whose work had a tremendous personal influence for so many of us!
Not trying to be crude, but is someone passing away after a long, rich life of 89 years something to mourn? Isn’t that kind of the best case scenario?
For me something like a black banner signifies a tragedy, not merely a death. A bunch of children being shot, a war, a disease ravaging a country, etc.
I’m curious to learn others’ perspectives however.
I think mourning is more than just tragedy. It's recognition of loss. And the tradition of black things around death has seemed more a sign or respect than as indication of some tragic underpinnings. But I actually don't know the history of the tradition, so I am happy to be corrected.
> Not trying to be crude, but is someone passing away after a long, rich life of 89 years something to mourn? Isn’t that kind of the best case scenario?
It can be "kind of a best case scenario" and yet you still mourn the loss. Mourning doesn't require a tragedy.
My grandmother died in her sleep at 94, pretty healthy all things considered (still had a good head, could putter along, and was in her own home of more than 60 years), after having had a great day. Pretty much the best death she and we could have hoped for. I still wouldn't have minded having her nearby for a few more years.
You know, I had a comment earlier about the importance of death rites being broadly lost on the young (and without meaning to sound pejorative, I have to believe that you are relatively young). I had thought to myself that I was perhaps being unfair -- surely even a child understands the importance of a funeral? -- but your comment shows that I wasn't wrong.
So as it apparently does need to be said: we're humans -- we mourn our dead. That is, the black bar denotes death, not tragedy; when we mourn those like Wirth who lived a full life, we can at once take solace in the fullness of a life lived and mourn that life is finite. The death rite allows us to reflect on the finiteness of our own lives, and the impact that Wirth had us, and the impact that we have on others. You are presumably too young to have felt this personal impact, but I assure you that many are brought back to their own earliest exposure to computing -- for many of us, was Pascal.
Again, RIP Nik Wirth; thank you for giving so many of us so much.
While very out of fashion these days, a black armband used to be a signal of mourning someone's death, whether the death was a "tragedy" (likely meaning unexpected, particularly violent, particularly early, or something similar) or not. The black bar is a digital imitation of that.
Niklaus Wirth contributed quite a bit to our field, and, directly or indirectly, impacted many of the people who frequent this (programming technology oriented) site.
A lot of tragedies happen in the world, but you're not going to see a black bar on HN for every one of them. It's not so much about the magnitude of the loss, but the contribution that person made to the history of computing.
Some people say that it doesn't matter if someone dies at age 89 -- after they have lived a full life and contributed all they had to give -- it's still just as sad and shocking.
Personally, I don't agree, to me it's just not as sad or shocking. People don't live forever and Wirth's life was as successful and complete as possible. It's not a "black day" where society truly lost someone before they fulfilled their potential.
