I had the pleasure of being one of Olin's undergraduate students in his also infamous compilers course. We even worked together on a paper for a Scheme conference back in 2004. Anyways, one of the things I will always remember him say to a group of students: "There are no stupid questions, only stupid students." And he always started a class with a story about his college days. Great guy.
Yup- I took compilers with him in 2005 and while it was one of the hardest courses I took, it definitely set the tone for what I wanted to work on. I was really sad when he left Georgia Tech- he was definitely one of the best professors I had there.
Took Fundies a few semesters back and looking to take compilers with him next spring (they cancelled it this semester). Agree with what was said so far.
Back at CMU there were local-to-campus on-line bulletin boards. Eventually these became local netnews news groups.
One of these was the "general" bboard for the CS department. Creativity was always valued in the department. Thus, while normal people would go to the general bboard to sell a used couch or get advice on selecting a water heater or find out what colloquium's were coming up next month, those people would often be confused and alarmed to find stuff like this:
"
16-Sep-82 12:09 Neil Swartz at CMU-750R Pigeon type question
This question does not involve pigeons, but is similar:
There is a lit candle in an elevator mounted on a bracket attached to the middle of one wall (say, 2" from the wall). A drop of mercury is on the floor. The cable snaps and the elevator falls.
What happens to the candle and the mercury?
=
16-Sep-82 17:21 Howard Gayle at CMU-780G WARNING!
Because of a recent physics experiment, the leftmost elevator has been contaminated with mercury. There is also some slight fire damage.
Decontamination should be complete by 08:00 Friday."
That kind of behavior caused consternation in some circles. Alas, the CS department also famously fosters an honor-based social order called the "reasonable person principle". Essentially, everyone should behave like grown-ups and assume the same of everyone else. The reasonable person principle doesn't leave a lot of easy room for rules like "don't post jokes to the general bboard else no desert for you". So, two responses evolved.
First, Scott Fahlman invented a typographic convention to signal that a post was a joke: :-)
Later, the cs.opinion newsgroup was created and people were encouraged to act out their creative writing impulses there.
cs.opinion occasionally went off the rails (e.g., when one T.A. came to have a fondness for railing with apparent sincerity against minority students who he thought unworthy of being admitted). Mostly, though, it was good fun. Occasionally some real gems of writing were posted there.
Olin was one of the better writers. I recall but don't have at hand several loving realist / surrealist descriptions he wrote of life in his native Georgia. More famously, and in some ways anticipating the SCSH acknowledgements, it this exchange:
"It's common knowledge that whenever you get two or more CS grad students together, the conversation will inevitably drift to the same topic: automatic weapons. [....]"
All up it has the general feel of coming from a magical time before the invention of Acceptable Use Policies, anti-vilification policies, lawyers combing through everything that happens on campus and sensitivity in general.
An intro here from the above link, by Olin, quoting others:
My posts aren't quite that gamy, but don't say I didn't warn you. It's the nature of the medium. To set context, the following quotes are a scattered selection taken from postings made by people other than myself during 1987.
``I think I would be much happier if the underlying structure of the universe were significantly different.''
``I believe that within our lifetimes it will be common to see people not just hopping but hovering and flying down the street to the store.''
``Some where in its machinations, the library computer, or some other administration machine, has got the idea that I am the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Me. Really! What is worse is that these bastards, with whom I am confused, owe the library $750.00.''
``For about the past year (give or take a factor of two) I've been having a fair amount of fantasies about doing it with women who are very facially ugly, but have large, firm tits.''
``I was booted from the girl scouts for `not being the right kind of girl for scouting.'''
``Sometimes I want to kill everyone that doesn't think like me +/- some percentage of error.''
``So tell me, how is using a sheep condom different than fucking one? Nope, sorry you can't screw a sheep, but if you kill it, and remove everything but the large intestine, that's ok. Riiight.''
``The most gross food I ever ate was raw human flesh.''
``I don't have an ice cube's chance in hell of finding lifelong happiness unless I can find a man as ugly as myself.''
``Most people who don't use drugs are assholes''
``I'd like my chance to pound you into a greasy pile of shit more closely resembling your personality''
``I think $1 million is a lot for the life of a child!''
``I think reading/posting on opinion is excellent foreplay, it kind of randomizes things: you can end up with a Muller story and get really turned on and end up screwing on top of the refrigerator, or you can read a Dippolitto or Sun post and feel like you're getting raped in a turkish prison by someone whose friendliest sex-toy is a cattle prod coated with vaseline.''
``I decided some time ago that when I finally go over the edge I am going to start by killing as many insurance people as possible before the state police can put enough bullets in me to stop me.''
``Given that justices of the Supreme Court receive lifetime appointments, I am completely against Bork's appointment. It seems like a big mistake to me to have someone so ugly making such important decisions.''
``Having tried it both ways, I've found that it's a lot easier to bring it off on a big Steinway.''
``Often when I hear someone flaming about English usage peeves, I get the definite feeling that this someone is massaging his balls and stroking his big, hard penis all the while thinking: `Hah, hah, that stupid asshole could be as big as me if he'd just use the fucking English language correctly.'''
I especially like how he just starts giving up on HTML as the essay progresses; all <HTML><HEAD><TITLE> up front; midway down he's on to <CODE>eval<CODE> and then by the end he's like screw it; I'm not gonna close that BODY tag.
The free software ecology should claim yet another victory -- it's like the only place in computing where people actually use curse words and have a decent sense of humor...
I did not say that I would be offended, just that officials tend to be very nervous about such threads. I know several stories about pupils who got in trouble with their school for less.
> I know several stories about pupils who got in trouble with their school for less.
Which only goes to show that they shouldn't be in a position that involves judgement, let alone teaching it.
Whenever someone says "zero tolerance", they're saying that they don't trust the person who would otherwise make the decision. When public school folk say that they like the zero tolerance procedures that they enforce, they're saying that they can't be trusted to make a decision.
They're correct, they shouldn't be trusted, which means that they shouldn't be in that position.
Another story that comes to mind is the guy who got detained for twittering that he would blow up the airport if he would have to wait any longer (don't remember the exact details, but it was obvious it was just figurative speech).
Writing acknowledgements in a book is a lot less casual than Twitter.
Why is this acknowledgment famous, anyway? I don't think it is very funny. I get the "fuck you all" part, but not the "severed heads" part. YMMV.
"Why is this acknowledgment famous, anyway? I don't think it is very funny."
Maybe because other people do find it funny? When I first read it a few years ago I was laughing my ass off, and forwarded it to the usual people in my "forward funny shit to" list. I imagine several of them did the same.
The problem with the lisp community was not that it contained people like this and Erik Naggum, but that they were celebrated. We all have flaws, which is no shame, provided we know they're flaws.
Maybe lisp's expressivity confers an advantage, but like a smelly bum shouting alcoholic abuse at passersby with secret superpowers, you have to wonder if it's worth it. Some people think the greatest strength of homo sapiens is our intelligence - but history suggests that it is our ability to cooperate (to share insights, build on them and to specialize) that is our real talent - our collective intelligence. Lisp's community celebrates individual, non-collective intelligence; people re-implement work themselves rather than reuse others' work.
It's not just the "community" though, there are also technical factors: the purpose of much of Java's "ceremony" is to facilitate re-use, especially in larger projects. Lisp's prototyping strengths are reuse weaknesses - a natural trade-off.
I like esr's point that lisp gives you additional perspectives in other languages - though a mathematical approach, which lisp models in some ways, gives this more strongly IHMO.
EDIT I invite rebuttal of the specific points raised in this comment.
Joking about one's self is not necessarily self-deprecation. You can exaggerate things for humorous effect in a way that's only partially deprecating, or even not at all. Without knowing the author, it may be hard to tell.
