Kristen Nygaard, co-creator of Simula 67, dies

jejones writes "Kristen Nygaard, co-creator of Simula 67, a variant of Algol 60 designed for writing simulations that is considered to be the first object-oriented programming language, died of a heart attack on August 10, 2002 in Oslo, Norway. An AP article, truly astonishing in its errors (e.g. "the programming language Simula...laid the basis for MS_DOS and the Internet"?!), can be found here."

Inventing the internet

[tunah]

The internet thing wasn't a big mistake. They got Algol 60 confused with Algore (60).

Re:Inventing the internet

[Mr. Quick]

brilliant!

laughed out loud.

Comparison a stretch...

[AIXadmin]

You could argue that the idea's behind object oriented programming that Kristen Nygaard pushed influcenced later ideas of how objects communicate, and interact with each other. Which or course have influenced the architectural course of the internet.

First Dahl, then Dijkstra, now Nygaard.

[arcade]

In the past couple of months three dinosaurs have passed away. First went Ole Johan Dahl, the other developer of Simula. Then, a week or so ago - Dijkstra passed away. And now Kristen Nygaard.

Are we now in a time where The Elder Ones are passing away?

Re:First Dahl, then Dijkstra, now Nygaard.

[Profane Motherfucker]

How suspicious that they are all Lutherans....something is going on.

Re:First Dahl, then Dijkstra, now Nygaard.

[Willfon]

>ppl die dipshit

The reference made was to the fantasy literature fenomenon where The Great First Ones ,who in some way are superior to us, pass over to whatever land of HyBrasil there might be in that mythos.

It is actually a quite precise reference as the inventive physicists and mathematicians, to whom we owe this keyboard on which we type, happen to be dying off. And for some reason the frequency of them dropping off seem to be a little higher nowadays.

But on the other hand, The Old Ones do not 'pass over' in the real world, they just make room for tomorrows dinosaurs. And the only way in which they are superior to us is that they get to wherever we are heading before us and get that last free window seat.

Knuth.

[sinserve]

God: "That is it, you have only 48 hours to finish those damn books. You had 48 years, but
you wasted them playing that damn organ at the church. You see, I have sent you to earth to
research and finish MY book, I made you my coauthor and forgave you of all human responsibilies
like worship and prayer. If your mother was an israeli, you could have been my second son, you
know I have a thing or two for jewish chicks [must be the skirts]. But what have you done? you
spent more time writing TeX than I spent writing all my holly books (I could have finished earlier,
but I was busy automating a few things with emacs lisp, I got sick of assembler, God is a real
programmer, dontcha know?)

Now, don't give me no damn excuses, I will not extend your life another second (I can't, I used a
packed structure and I ran out of extra bits for the life field, I know premature optimization is
the root of all evil, but I have a HUGE "human life" database and I need to squeeze the last iota out of this machine)

So, yeah, go ahead and do stuff, umkay? I need to do some apoclypse and stuff and I need a few algos. Just get off that damn organ and write something, willya? and give a copy of it to a guy
called sinserve, he has slashdot ID 455889."

icon-based?

[ttfkam]

Did I miss something? What is an "icon-based programming language" such as the one mentioned in the article?

Is this dragging the "for" icon on top of the "database cursor" icon and filling in a SQL query after a right-click context menu?

Re:icon-based?

[V. Mole]

1. They meant the Icon programming language, see here [arizona.edu]

2. There are such things as graphical/icon programming languages. (After all, isn't that what a flowchart is?) The may make the most sense in simulations, where each box can be a type of transform, and you can connect them together in (presumably) interesting ways. Here's one link that might be interesting [berkeley.edu]. Or not.

Re:icon-based?

[Meowing]

icon-based programming language: I think they might be trying and failing to describe the Smalltalk environment. The Smalltalk language certainly owed a lot to Simula.

MS-DOS reference: can't help but think someone was trying to add accuracy and something got lost in the translation (Mac OS and Windows owed lots to the PARC work involving Smalltalk, and Windows began life as a DOS shell, and, well, chop a few words until the meaning gets lost...)

Internet reference: again, looks like an indirect Smalltalk heritage deal, in that the browsers that popularized the medium owed a lot to those GUIs that owed a lot to Smalltalk that owed a lot to Simula....

not an obituary, but at least a mini-bio

[eirikma]

Kristen was a man who always had a lot of interesting and well thought through things to say. His academic contributions will be commented on by computer professionals, and his political contributions will be commented on by politicians. Those who knew him know that he always regarded his work with politics and science as parts of an integrated whole. A fairly recent article where he sums up his work can be found here [ifi.uio.no]. Quite interesting (as always).

Re:not an obituary, but at least a mini-bio

[bj_rmz]

from one of his lectures [ifi.uio.no]

"Secondly, a main contribution to reducing the effects of conflicts is to dissociate your prestige from silly factors like seniority, rank, faultlessness, etc. And as you grow older, show in practice that you listen to criticism, all criticism, and also from younger people, and adapt to it visibly when you think it is right

... and he wasn't kidding! If you opened your mouth in one of his classes, you were first welcomed, then challenged, never insulted and usually inspired. Probably the best or second best teacher I've ever had.

object-orientation's father

[sohp]

If AP wasn't writing for the masses, they might have said, "the co-inventor of object-oriented programming".

I'll let the late genius speak for himself, though: Kristen Nygaard [ifi.uio.no]'s home page.

Sigh. The man had class.

[AJWM]

Er, sorry.

I remember when I discovered Simula 67 (aka "Algol with classes") on a DecSystem-10, I thought it was pretty cool. (Burroughs') Algol was my first programming lanaguage (APL my second, talk about opposites), so learning Simula was a snap. Unfortunately there wasn't much call for it.

Imagine my joy some ten years later when I heard about this new "C with classes" language that some guy named Stroustrup was working on. (Imagine my disgust at what C++ has become...)

He also kept Norway out of EU

[Per Abrahamsen]

He got an honorary doctorate at Aalborg University [www.auc.dk] in Denmark while I was there are. His acceptence speach was all about why Norway should not join the EU. While it was entertaining, especially since Denmark had joined the EU long before, it was somewhat disappointing for us CS students, who had hoped to hear something about OOP or his latest language, beta [mjolner.com].

Re:He also kept Norway out of EU

[Zeinfeld]

That is all he talked about when he visited my group at MIT.

Re:He also kept Norway out of EU

[OldMiner]

That is all he talked about when he visited my group at MIT.

And the whosits said to him, but not the other him, that this was indeed what was good, and that it needed to be done. And so it was.

Modeling Verus Simulating

[Tablizer]

While Simula and OOP may be great for physical simulations, I think many of the ideas have been misapplied or over-applied to software engineering.

Here is an except about modeling versus simulating from my website:

"I disagree with the suggestion that business processes should be heavily modeled as real-world interactions. Viewing business applications as "simulations" can be problematic. Simulations are to reflect interactions of the "real world" in order to study the real world and improve its flow. Business applications are to achieve something by the best means possible using computers. These two goals are not necessarily the same, nor necessarily result in the same solution. A common example given of this disconnect is that if flight was modeled via real-world simulations of our actual experiences, then airplanes would have wings that flap.

Mirroring the real world and getting something done as efficiently as possible are different animals. Sometimes they overlap, but often they don't. The strength and weaknesses of computers are different than those of humans. Thus, to achieve the same task as simple and flexible as possible via computer requires different approaches than achieving it as a human with desks, paper, elevators, etc.

I don't really question OO's value in modeling interactions and behaviors of the real world. However, the best techniques for modeling the real world and for making better software are probably not the same in most cases.

I also notice that some software developers try to mirror the "real world" very closely in order to keep the customer comfortable by keeping alive archaic processes from the manual way of doing things. However, one may miss opportunities to improve or streamline the process if this is done. I am not saying that initial customer comfort is a bad thing, but perhaps the customer should be aware of the tradeoff being provided. Just be careful not offend them by implying that they won't be able to "handle the ideal process". These kinds of things often takes delicate diplomatic skills that frankly exceed my abilities.

Keep in mind, though, that the issue of the internal model (what the developer sees) and the external model (user interface) are generally independent. One can reflect or simulate the external world without having the other do the same."

(from: http://geocities.com/tablizer/model.htm)

In Memoriam page

[magnusbe]

Here is a page for obituaries etc. http://www.ifi.uio.no/in_memoriam_kristen/