I shared this video on Myspace on July 20, 2009 where it has received 4604 views as of today.
Well, hot dang! Youtube decided I get more time. They sent me a note last week: Congratulations! You can upload videos longer than 15 mins. This is GREAT news and I’m celebrating by uploading the synopsis of Ken Iverson’s Toronto memorial service I made back in 2004 when I first fell in love with my video camera.
I’m looking forward to a 2012 that is just as fast paced as 2011. And for whatever it’s worth, I didn’t blog as much as I did last year which is something you will notice in this post of photos. Yes indeed, a picture is worth 1000 words.
In fact, we only made 12 posts for 2011 and in spite of this low showing, my faithful readers, according to a report WordPress sent me last night:
This blog was viewed about 9,700 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
I’m thrilled! Rock on!
Happy New Year Everyone! Let’s kick some more ass in 2012.
As they say in rock and roll, “You can’t always get what you want… but you just might find you get what you need…”
When Ken Lettow asked me if he could swing down to North Carolina for my interview with Professor Fred Brooks, I answered with a resounding and emphatic, “NO!”
You gotta love Ken. Persistence is his middle name. He then proceeded to convince me that he would not bring havoc to my film set and in fact, he would make himself useful. And a short training session later… I have a sound engineer and set photographer all in one enthusiastic bundle of a subject matter expertise. In short, a much appreciated helping hand.
In honour of the 90th anniversary of Ken Iverson’s birth Ken Lettow sent out a wonderful account of our adventure to North Carolina to the J-Chat forum:
As [KEI and Prof Brooks] developed course material for the class, Ken began to formalize the notation that came to be known as APL, the “the blackboard version” as Eugene McDonnell once so aptly put it. Their collaboration ultimately resulted in the publication of two books, Ken Iverson’s “A Programming Language”, in 1962 and “Automatic Data Processing” by Iverson and Brooks, published in 1963. They also became lifelong friends during this period.
You can read Ken’s full text here. He’s also posted a great set of photos.
Happy holidays everyone. May the Force be with you always.
December 6th is a somber anniversary for Canadian women in tech, especially those of us in my generation who remember 1989.
A gunman confronts 60 engineering students during their class at l’École Polytechnique in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989. He separates the men from the women and tells the men to leave the classroom, threatening them with his .22-calibre rifle. The enraged man begins a shooting rampage that spreads to three floors and several classrooms, jumping from desk to desk while female students cower below. He roams the corridors yelling, “I want women.”
Chilling words. And this happened in Canada. I’ll say this again, because if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.
This happened in Canada.
The lesson is that tragic things happen when people are singled out and demonized based on some arbitrary attribute. And I mean this to include all levels of society; at home, at work, in the judicial system, in the movie theaters.
Do me a favour and take a quiet moment to think about what I’m saying to you today.
Thank you.
And forever, I appreciate all your support in this crazy documentary adventure.
Last year we discovered that the first APL workspace was saved November 27, 1966 at 18.53.59. (GMT); the excitement of this momentous event pulling the guys away from home and the American Thanksgiving holiday. Today we know that this evidence isn’t 100% the truth… it’s more like 99.7% truth… According to an eyewitness account from my dad history has been slightly amended… if only by a few seconds!
Should today be APL’s official birthday?
It just so happens that 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of that one little book, “A Programming Language“. THE one little book, that Harvard deemed too small to launch its author, Kenneth E. Iverson into a tenure track position. Harvard sent Ken packing! It wasn’t until much later that Ken’s work and this one little book was recognized by the world, winning the Turing Award which is recognized as the “highest distinction in Computer science” and the “Nobel Prize of computing“.
The moral of this story?
Do it right and do it well. Happy Birthday APL!
Many thanks to Rick Procter who reminded me about the significance of 2012 earlier this fall.
I have a Stats exam next week and because I really should be studying, I thought I’d drop you a quick note.
First, a special announcement: the J folks are planning a conference RIGHT HERE in Toronto July 23rd &24th 2012. Come one! Come all!
The J-community has really stepped up to the plate in terms of financial and in-kind labour for this documentary project. Let’s face it folks, unless you’re Fred Brooks, Arthur Whitney or Eric Iverson, or a dozen or so other stars, wanting to be in the documentary doesn’t do much for me.
I expect you noticed I was in Chapel Hill last month. Luckily, Roger Hui alerted me to the fact that The University of North Carolina has a programming gem in their freshman class who, at all of 18, has already made a splash in the J programming forums. Welcome Marshall Lochbaum, and his former high school math teacher Henry Rich (pictured above).
And of course, less obvious was my visit to NYC to see for myself what amazing work is going on at Kx. If you haven’t watched the video of our Simon Garland in action (with moderator Tom Groenfeldt) you’re missing the cutting edge.
OK! Off I go… Exam prep is really not that bad… or so I keep telling myself…
As far as I understand it, Tom Gibson gave Hélène the best send-off ever. And what I see from Twitter is that there are a few of you out there who know Tom. As for me, my efforts to not be extremely sad, are not working… Yet.
This is a reposting of Tom’s letter, which Terry Huff sent out on the Toronto Data Services Division listserv.
From: Tom Gibson [mailto:tomwgibson@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 4:53 PM
To:tomwgibson@gmail.com
Subject: Hélène Falardeau
Hello,
Apologies for the “form” email, but it occurred to me while creating this obit for Hélène for the newspaper that many of you may miss it, so I have included it here. At the bottom of this email is a link to lovely blog post (and picture) from where Hélène last worked in Vancouver.
Please forward or post this to anyone you know who might have known Hélène.
Thank you. Tom
###
Hélène Falardeau died in her Vancouver home on Saturday October 8, 2011. She left us happy, at peace, and surrounded by those she loved and who cherished her.
Born in Montreal in 1951, Hélène moved to Toronto at age 14. She was very much the cool and protective older sister to brother Marc and sister Ann (Gosleigh), whom she adored. Hélène later worked in administration for companies such as Upjohn, Mercedes-Benz, the Quebec Government and Reuters. Hélène’s love of reading likely blossomed while working at Coles Bookstore during high school when she brought home Agatha Christie books to help then 13-year-old Marc learn to speak English. One summer Hélène worked as hiring coordinator for the then fledgling Cirque du Soleil the first year they came to Toronto. Other summers Hélène worked as an EKG technician in Chicago while staying with her dear friend Martha. It was during her high school years that Hélène’s “French-English-ness” took shape, and which is so much a part of her. Moving from Montreal to Toronto in the mid sixties, Hélène saw The Beatles in both of their Canadian concerts (1965 Montreal, 1966 Toronto) … one of those screaming girls right up front. Many in Toronto will remember Hélène through her work at Reuters where as Manager of Administration she was known for organizing spectacular Holiday parties, her amazing doodles (the beginnings of her artistic career), and adorning the walls with wonderful artwork. Hélène had style. In October 1998 Hélène moved to Nelson BC to be with Tom Gibson and be stepmother—friend she would say—to Chris and Danielle. Hélène worked in the art supply department at Cowan’s. It was in Nelson that the art inside Hélène emerged, and in a BIG way. Work from her first pen and ink show at the Glacier Gallery surprised many. Who expected such imaginings from a “little old lady from Toronto” (her words)? As an artist she created lifelong friendships with other Nelson artists who encouraged her (“go bigger”), and she earned acclaim for several art series (kimonos, slips, escapades, …). Several more shows, and colour, followed in her eight years in Nelson. Then to Vancouver with Tom. Yaletown, overlooking False Creek, in a very different but active and vibrant life. In Vancouver Hélène had fun working part time at Matchmaker for Hire in Vancouver. A Toronto-lover, it took her a few months to say “now I get Vancouver.” A couple weeks before Hélène died she added, “I love our home here.”
Hélène died from a cancer that struck her dramatically in the summer of 2007. The grace, dignity and resourcefulness with which she faced cancer is a remarkable but perfect expression of who Hélène is, and is something the many who love her can now find comfort in embracing. Please join us in celebrating Hélène’s life on Saturday, October 22, 2011 from 1-4pm. We are pleased to be able to host our celebration of Hélène at the Harrison Gallery, located at 901 Homer Street in Vancouver. In lieu of flowers please consider donating to InspireHeath, a Vancouver-centred, integrated cancer care organization who have helped Hélène in many ways (http://www.inspirehealth.ca/
###
Here’s the blog post. Click the picture in it to see a beautiful picture showing Hélène after her hair started to grow back after chemo in 2008. The photo in the obit piece was taken in Vancouver in 2010.
http://www.matchmakerforhire.
A quick note from the trenches. I’m exhilarated and exhausted as we come to the close of the conference.
The take home message? Even in the world of documentary film making, eyeballs rule.
So, the sneaky plan of releasing the 1974 Origins of APL to the public is turning out to be the coup of coups!
You should see their faces! FOUR THOUSAND views?
Of course, by now it’s 4,367. Viva La Jedi!
Oh. And today, I’m not kidding.
I hope you aren’t disappointed. I really do have a legacy to live up to, here. No shit. I’m so proud of our quirky little community, and as I said in the film synopsis, I plan to tell everyone about it. What else is a woman who faced, first hand, the Iverson challenge to do? Parrot back what’s been done before? No way. Trail blaze, buddy.
On that note, I’m completely excited to report that I’m speaking on a hot panel at a super cool conference called Storytelling X.1.
Digital Storytelling X.1 is a one day symposium exploring how digital technologies are changing forms of storytelling today.
Ah, the story and its relationship to money! Everyone wants to hear about money. It’s the math that everyone cares about! So, that’s what I’ll talk about. Isn’t it fitting for an Array language storyteller!
And I’ll share the epiphany I had at hot docs after listening to Frank Rose. (Ok, shaking his hand was a huge thrill!)
It is the inspiring, brilliant and beautiful Siobhan O’Flynn who is responsible for getting me to Storytelling X.1, follow her on twitter, you won’t be disappointed. @sioflynn.
It took forever to get through immigration and I’m having a really bad hair day (sorry Monica) – BUT AMERICA HERE I AM.
You can follow this little story on twitter #arrayStories
In 1997 a man by the name of Clayton M. Christensen published a book called The innovator’s dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail. This book canonized the concept of ”disruptive technologies” which Christensen had cooked up to dispute the ”technology mudslide hypothesis.” If you’re up on your business innovation theory, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
This is why being called disruptive is now a huge compliment. Who got named as the Disruptor #45 this week by Institutional Investor? Our very own Simon Garland. The article’s punch line?
The advent of higher-capacity machines promises to improve efficiency not only by handling more data but also by reducing programming complexity. But such gains are neither easy nor automatic for those who run these R&D races.
This is photo of Simon with Charlie Skelton last winter in NYC. This smile, is the ever polite and indulgent, “DO you really need to point that camera at me on the weekend?”
Oh! The goose bumps!
It starts at the end of page 4, where Charles Petzold tell’s IT World’s Bob Reselman that he once had a “hot torrid affair” with APL. Isn’t that lovely? And just for the record, I do agree with Mr Petzold’s stance on coding and the “imaginative act”.
Thank you, “Brad” (Who I believe is in Ohio, and perhaps a neighbour of my sister.)
Charles Petzold’s technical writing reflects the evolution of computer programming over the last 20 years, particularly in the Microsoft programming environment. He has influenced more than a generation of computer programmers.
- Petzold talks about coding, computing, and his love affair with APL July 15, 201 ITWorld
Editor’s note: The first time I met Ken Lettow face to face was when he showed up at a meet-up for the film in NYC with a stack of Computer History books. He brought them to share with unbridled enthusiasm. Right on! He even offered to let me borrow them take them home to Canada! Then and there, I knew: Here’s a Jedi Knight!
- Catherine
Where were you, August 6th, 1991?
Twenty years ago today, the 1991 APL Conference was in full swing at Stanford University in Palo Alto California. Nearly 400 APL’ers from around the world attended, making it one of the most well attended APL conferences in history.
For the array language community, excitement ran high for a variety of reasons. First, it was the 25th anniversary of APL. Second, a large Russian contingent was in attendance. A few Russians gave APL talks, while others began planning for the APL conference to be held in St. Petersburg the following year. This was two years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The J programming language also played a large part in the conference, just 14 months after its introduction to the world by Ken Iverson and Roger Hui at a Toronto APL SIG meeting.
Many of the immortal figures in the array language community presented papers on J. Donald McIntyre presented his talk called Mastering J, while Ken Iverson, Roger Hui and Eugene McDonnell gave a presentation on Tacit Definition. Roger Hui and Bob Bernecky gave a talk on Gerunds and Representations, and Ed Cherlin gave the presentation Pure functions in APL and J.
IMHO, the most interesting and funny presentation was the panel, “Is J a dialect of APL?” I say interesting, because I think it reveals some of the attitudes of the APL community towards J at the time, and funny, because the defenders of J made it so.
In its early days, J seemed to cause some level of consternation in the APL community. Many APL’ers seemed downright disturbed that Ken Iverson invented a new language that eschewed many of the things they had grown to love about APL (the lovely APL symbols etc.).
Jonathan Barman and Anthony Camacho’s reports on this panel (see Vector Vol. 8, No. 2, pgs. 76-80) provides an entertaining account of the speakers’ comments:
Eugene McDonnell – The question (“Is J a dialect of APL?”) is irrelevant. Surely proponents of J would not be thrown out of the APL community.
Phil Benkard – This is a political decision, but political decisions affect our lives. Many aspects of J are different from APL. Functions are referred to as Verbs, box is different from nesting, hook and fork are new in J, and strand notation is different. No formal decision can be made today, but what political decision should be made?
Joey Tuttle – Who cares if J and APL are different? Hopefully new insights will come from J and SAX which will enhance APL.
Richard Nabavi – …The academic view of a language is different from the commercial view, and sometimes the best solution does not win…The main objective should be to reduce the dialects of APL so that it can be promoted to a wide audience, and can be standardized. Will there be a J92 conference?
The first J conference was J96 with 123 attendees and 12 papers presented [Remembering Ken Iverson].
Bob Bernecky – APL and J ideas need to be disseminated to the larger world of computing, and it does not matter which language is used. The character set inhibits APL. J is more compilable that APL, and has a simpler syntax. The semantics of J are totally regular. Several mistakes were made in APL, and J is a new start where these mistakes have been rectified. J is not a dialect of APL, it is a functional language.
Garth Foster – Don McIntyre took a long time to learn J. Perhaps J is a successor of APL, but may not be a success.
J was introduced 14 months prior. What constitutes “a long time”?
Phil Benkard – The APL2 syntax is simple, and the syntax and semantics are separated. There were mistakes in APL. It was disappointing that there was nobody present at the last standards meeting representing the Sharp APL or J community.
Ed Cherlin – It is interesting that we are discussing the question at all. Why is this the one topic we want to argue about? Papers on J have been accepted at this conference and will continue to be accepted.
Bob Bernecky – Surely APL’ers will not drum out the J community. The popularity of APL and J will only increase if we all aim to publish articles in the big circulation magazines and journals.
Donald McIntyre – APL conferences without Iverson would be like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
Now one that makes me smile:
Ken Iverson – The dictionary of J contains an introductory comment that J is a dialect of APL, so in a sense the whole debate is Ken’s fault! He is flattered to think that he has created a new language.
All in all, a pretty interesting day in array language history.
The following is adapted from email conversations with Greg Jaxon, a Compiler Engineer from Illinois, USA who studied at Syracuse University. He is an active contributor to the APL LinkedIn online forum and it turns out he met my dad at Minowbrook in 1980. I needed a little help to conclude my, “Where were you…” miniseries, and Greg graciously stepped up to the plate.
My dad, incidentally, sends his regards from Manitoulin Island. Though he still controls his farm house with his iPhone, he doesn’t miss the Internet connection.
To give a little bit of context, I was born in 1965 to very young and idealistic parents who believed that the 60′s really were going to change things. In 1966, IBM whisked my family off to NY, USA from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We subsequently moved to the Philadelphia, PA, USA area and ended up living in a small college town called Swarthmore.
Greg Jaxon writes:
One non-programming thing that has always intrigued me about the “APL community” and which has been formative for me politically and personally is our early and frequent use of consensus decision-making. Perhaps your Dad could start that thread of the story, since (as I understand it) the group at Philadelphia took on this Quaker practice to form the exact definitions in the first APL implementation.
On Day 1 of the X3J10 APL standards effort the topic of voting came up right away. As that work progressed we used a few unorthodox voting schemes to tease out where consensus could be found – a lot of preference ranking and approval threshold measurement. It was clear that the intellectual descendants of the first 6 had the same passion for getting the hive mind to function optimally – to not marginalize the difficult corner opinions, not to cave in to majority rule. I’m convinced this is why APL is so very good – it hasn’t compromised on anything important – instead it found and fixed all the problems until no more could be found. It’s not just good enough to get by…
The Minnowbrook conferences also echo this emphasis on cooperative agreement. Trade Secrets come out of their closets there – mostly I think out of the sheer joy of meeting other live humans who understand the topics (these are the uber-geeks of an already too geeky computing subculture).
This got my attention. Swarthmore is in the heartland of Quaker territory. I was educated by Quakers. And Greg must have read Adin Falkoff’s, The Design of APL.
I belong to the generation uncomfortably sandwiched between the boomers and their children. My attitude is formed more from the dress in black, hard core music generation, than the Flower Child generation but I still have strong ties to the Quakers and have remained connected to them up here in Canada. To my good fortune, I started programming APL as a teen and unlike many of my peers, I’ve had a career from the get-go. But still, the irreverence of my generation stuck. In other words, I’m a little cynical.
The first time I read Adin Falkoff’s, The Design of APL, the line about Quaker Consensus jumped right out of the text. (like: WHAT? Where the hell does that come from? Consensus? At IBM?) And as I move through this project, I am learning a lot more about business, I have been chipping away at 50+ years of Computer History, and naturally, my gaze falls upon the history of IBM. Which is also American corporate history. And patent history. An intellectual property law history. I’m still pondering… What on earth is a reference to Quaker process doing in an IBM publication?
Greg responds:
My history lesson on this: Penn was a Flower Child of a famous military officer; he joined the Quakers who were emphatically not the Church of England, nor easily governed by any hierarchical law. Through consensus they sought God’s natural Laws for their community. Penn acquired his North American woods to settle the King’s debt to his late father. But by the time he got with the English aristocracy programme, his Woods were full of Quaker hippies.
For many years he sent governors and magistrates and others to try to collect rents or taxes, and the resident Friends politely declined to impose these on themselves. So your Quakers were the original American libertarians struggling to understand God’s intention for human Law.
To find Harvard mathematicians (arguably in search of much the same kind of revelation) adopt this practice, is interesting. To see it grow into APL, itself a quaint minority language with an uncannily natural place near the heart of Computer Science’s new fascination with parallel execution models, cooperating independent processes, and clean data abstraction, … is perhaps a recurrent story in the history of ideas. Your Dad’s “shared variables” ideas combine “message passing” with “shared memory” approaches to parallelism, a synthesis sorely missing in modern parallel languages.
There… my contribution to a historical explanation, I can cite “Conceived in Liberty” by historian Murray Rothbard for this summary of the Quaker colonies.
Wow. Now THAT gives me a lot to think about. On this crazy filmmaking journey, I’m paying careful attention to the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, our culture and “progress”. And by we, I also mean people, not just us.
And, sadly, this is the one year anniversary of Adin Falkoff’s death, the man who wrote those words about Quaker Consensus at IBM in 1973.
The big plan for the summer was to get my research 100% completely organised. All this information is floating around in my head and it is making a little crazy, to be perfectly honest.
I’m about 80% behind schedule.
Documentary film making is about as opposite to the finance world as you can get. I’m adjusting to the time frames.
There is progress, but I’ve given up on the predicting side of things. When will this end? I don’t know. And, yes, I do feel a slight panic when I think about it. I will, however, eventually figure out how to finish what I’ve started. It’s a matter of pride.
What you see in the photo above is my new hope. Scrivener is a writing program a thoughtful Array Jedi Knight passed to me. It’s WORKING! After spending 2 1/2 years trying to figure out how the hell am I going to keep track of this… this… mess! Scrivener and the filing cabinet I got for Valentines day may do it. What a huge relief.
These tools are driving a more introspective phase of the project. I’m sifting, evaluating and thinking. And journaling with more commitment now that I have a way to integrate my daily thoughts with the volumes of material I’m wading through.
On the networking front, I met some people at Hot Docs this year who have already catapulted me light years forward, and they don’t even know it. Howard Fraiberg, for example, insisted that I join Docs, which I did do. This gives me access to people across Canada who have been slugging it out in the documentary film business for decades. And I’m privy to their conversations. Awesome. There’s evidence I’ll live to tell the tale! And the work! An endless stream of inspiration. This week, I fell in love with A Work in Progress, Frederic Bohbot’s new project. Look!
Good cinematography is all about catching proper light will expertly balanced gear.
One of the uncomfortable consequences of the subjects I usually film is that they have a better handle on basic math than I do. Not that I suck, but often my thinking-through process is slower than theirs. One can see that internal gears are at work. I noticed a very well controlled twinge of impatience in one instance when I was mentally working out the angle for a light. In other words, I need to practice a lot before I go out in the field.
Today I’m gearing up for some VIP interviews in the fall, literally. I haven’t been satisfied my lighting system so I bought a new reflector.
And spent the evening testing it on my trusty models, Nichi and Nanna.
I want to be able to capture a richness of colour in people’s personal environments.
Light and cameras are all about getting the triangle just right.
Testing was going more or less fine, until the reflector came floating down on poor Nichi’s head. At which point I switched and aimed the sun beams at Nanna.
Klout reminds me this morning that my “influence” has dropped 50%. I guess this is what happens when one doesn’t participate in cyberspace these days, you get an automated email: “Hey! YOU’RE not the cool kid!” Yikes.
The truth is I’m so busy, I can’t believe it. I got into that Statistics class I was hoping to avoid because last week it was full. It’s still full, but now with me in it. Damn. That’s good. Right?
Fortunately, I had the foresight to hike up to Manitoulin Island to visit my dad on his new farm before it all began. The farm is not actually new, he moved up there two years ago, but this was my first venture. If you’re wondering why it took me so long look at the map.
So, while I was there, dad worked. I did nothing except wander around and photograph small and wild things. And try to capture the moon and clouds. And poke around in his private business. I brought back his journals from 1966 to 1977 among other bits and bobs. And it turns out that my dad is perhaps a bit of a book thief, so I now own a couple books which previously graced the libraries of Ken Iverson and Adin Falkoff.
Incidentally, Sage, the infamous cat in the box loves country life and slept at my feet while I was visiting.
Now it’s back to the rate race. Hey! Up my Klout! I wanna be the cool kid again!
(Just kidding. I know it’s not Klout that makes me cool. To borrow from Manuel Simone, it’s intellectual badassness.)
The second vlog is now up and ready for you to see. It is a special conference edition, that showed live in Boston on Monday, Oct 3, 2011.
My apologies for the extra “click”. Videos on the landing page, even from Youtube, kill load times and then clunk, down goes your Google ranking. (If that sentence is not English, what is it?)
So, the vlog now has it’s own page, in a Youtube “player” that will also allow you to see past vlogs, should you so desire.
Enjoy. Good Day. And thanks so much for watching.
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