Chuck was one of the kindest and thoughtful people I ever met in SV in the 70's and 80's.
I had taken his CMU PhD thesis on compiler optimization and applied it (in a small way) to Harvard's ECL language for my undergrad thesis project. So he flew me out to PARC the summer of my junior year ('75), and we had some good talks about it. (Which was pretty eye-opening, as I hadn't seen all the PARC goodies in person yet.)
Chuck was actually a Jesuit candidate for the (Catholic) priesthood undergrad (U Cincinnati), but decided to drop out and pursue a technical career.
He brought me in for an interview while in his last days at PARC, which I realized later was for Adobe, but I just had started at a laser printer startup (spinoff from Knuth's TeX project--Imagen), so I missed that one...
People complaining about Adobe in these threads are really complaining about the post-Geschke/Warnock Adobe. While they were leading the company, it was completely engineering-driven with a laser focus on product excellence (I know, because I used their products from the start). After they left day-to-day leadership, Adobe devolved to the usual sales-driven organization.
I kept in touch with Chuck and would sometimes chat at Seybold shows, and via email. He was always helpful and kind, and, in the old days when he was running Adobe, would reach behind the scenes to get things done for me.
Apparently, the '92 kidnapping really broke his spirit.
I was a big fan of Adobe through the '90s and early '00s and also noticed their devolution post-Geschke/Warnock. I wish those complaining about today's Adobe could have seen how amazing the company and their products were back then.
> After they left day-to-day leadership, Adobe devolved to the usual sales-driven organization.
Is there any way to avoid a company declining like that, short of forcing the founders to stay for life? Even that solution won't work forever, of course.
I had taken his CMU PhD thesis on compiler optimization and applied it (in a small way) to Harvard's ECL language for my undergrad thesis project. So he flew me out to PARC the summer of my junior year ('75), and we had some good talks about it. (Which was pretty eye-opening, as I hadn't seen all the PARC goodies in person yet.)
Chuck was actually a Jesuit candidate for the (Catholic) priesthood undergrad (U Cincinnati), but decided to drop out and pursue a technical career.
He brought me in for an interview while in his last days at PARC, which I realized later was for Adobe, but I just had started at a laser printer startup (spinoff from Knuth's TeX project--Imagen), so I missed that one...
People complaining about Adobe in these threads are really complaining about the post-Geschke/Warnock Adobe. While they were leading the company, it was completely engineering-driven with a laser focus on product excellence (I know, because I used their products from the start). After they left day-to-day leadership, Adobe devolved to the usual sales-driven organization.
I kept in touch with Chuck and would sometimes chat at Seybold shows, and via email. He was always helpful and kind, and, in the old days when he was running Adobe, would reach behind the scenes to get things done for me.
Apparently, the '92 kidnapping really broke his spirit.
Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine...