[TUHS] Managers/architects (was: AIX moved into maintainance mode)

[Marc Donner]

I'd certainly list Bob Sproull for all three, from personal observation.

My guess is that Ivan Sutherland probably qualified back when he still
programmed ... I mean, after all, he invented the linked list in order to
implement his thesis program (Sketchpad) in about 1960.
=====
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mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>


On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 12:50 PM Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

>     > From: Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>
>
>     > At least 30 years ago I said "He's good programmer, a good architect,
>     > and a good manager. I've never seen that in one person before".
>
> Corby? Although he was just down the hall from me, I never saw him
> operating
> in any of those roles; maybe some of the old-time Unix people have some
> insight. Saltzer is about off-scale in #2; probably good as a manager
> (although I had a monumental blow-up with him in the hallway on the 5th
> floor, but I was pretty close to unmanageable when I was young ;-); he took
> over Athena when it was stumbling, and got it going. Dave Clark is high on
> all three - he could manage me! :-)
>
> Bob Taylor? PARC did some _incredibly_ important stuff in his time. Yes, I
> know a lot of the credit goes to those under him (Butler Lampson, Alan Kay
> -
> not sure if he was in Taylor's group, Boggs, Metcalfe, etc) but he had to
> manage them all. Not sure what his technical role was, though.
>
> Vint Cerf? Again, A1*** as a manager, but had some failings as a
> architect. I
> think the biggest share of the blame for the decision to remove the
> variable
> size addresses from TCP/IP3, and replace them with 32-bit addresses in
> TCP/IPv4, goes to him. (Alas, I was down the hall, not in the room, that
> day;
> I wasn't allowed in until the _next_ meeting. I like to think that if I'd
> been
> there, I could/would have pointed out the 'obvious' superior alternative -
> 'only length 4 must be supported at this time'.)
>
>         Noel
>
> PS: ISTR that about a month ago someone was asking for management papers
> from that era (but I was too busy to reply); two good ones are:
>
>   - F. J.  Corbat??, C. T. Clingen, "A Managerial View of the Multics
> System Development"
>         https://multicians.org/managerial.html
>   - F. J. Corbat??, C. T. Clingen, and J. H. Saltzer, "Multics -- the
> first seven years"
>         https://multicians.org/f7y.html
>
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