Another pioneer passes

[crfriend]

It's already been a rough week, but this afternoon while I was out this sad piece of new arrived, and I must say was entirely unwelcome:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/techn ... .html?_r=2

The "heavyweights" in the industry are, indeed, now dying off, and Gene is the most recent one to pass. His designs still live on, though, and in that he has achieved his measure of immortality. Whether one adores or abhors the System/360 architecture, one needs to know that it has touched you; most likely several financial transactions each of us inevitably make in the course of each day pass through a machine descended from Dr. Amdahl's work in the early 1960s. And, yes, it's probably written in COBOL.

Godspeed, Sir. We'll leave the blinkenlights on for you.

[partlyscot]

I had not heard of him before this, but the last line caught my eye.

>“He’s always been right up there with Seymour Cray or Steve Wozniak,” Mr. Spicer said, “with real cachet in the technical community.”

Anyone who is compared to Steve Wozniak got to be someone to pay attention to.