Tony Hoare has died
lefenetrou.blogspot.comI've merged the comments into this thread now: Tony Hoare has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47324054.
Normally we'd try to re-up the earliest submission of a story, but in this case the article had little information, while the other post is nicely personal and detailed. I've left below the comments which were (understandably) debating whether the news was true or not.
(Just to be clear: this is not a criticism! It's an important story, nextos is a fine contributor, and the submission was entirely understandable.)
Even now his Oxford bio lists him as alive, by his Royal Society bio lists him as deceased.
This post appears to have been hidden from the front page of HN?
Yes, it was submitted before the news had been confirmed. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47327440.
Wikipedia seems to say he passed yesterday.
But there are no citations on any of the edits claiming this, and there were two incompatible dates claimed (March 5, March 8).
At this exact moment it looks like those edits may have been reverted.
No black band at the op of HN? Is that only for rich people?
I hope you've noticed which story has been at the top of HN all day today, and how lovely the comments in it are.
Pardon if I’m dumb/missed something: Is Tony Hoare dead? I see no news anywhere.
I can't find any news either, but that is the claim of this submission.
The main reason to find it surprising is that it's now 4 days since then, I'd have expected something to have been published besides this page.> Jonathan Bowen informed me of Tony Hoare's death on Thursday, March 5th. (translated from French)Sadly it seems to be true. Heard it late last week from a coworker in a position to know.
That is the claim of the post. I also don't see confirmation elsewhere
There is very little information around, this is the most authoritative post I could find. There are some comments on X as well.
According to this blogpost, he sadly passed away last Thursday, March 5th.
There were a few recent edits about this on Tony Hoar's Wikipedia page which were reverted because there was no substantial evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hoare&action...
It was edited again a few minutes ago and now displays Sunday, March 8th as his date of death.
And it's gone again!
His Wikipedia page is still worded in the present tense. People tend to be johnny on the spot about that so maybe not?
The blog author says that Jonathan Bowen informed them, so it is possible it hasn't been officially announced.
Yes. He died last week.
RIP Tony Hoare.
Legendary Turing Award Winner.
Any link to information?
Came through personal contact who is close to the family.
Wikipedia is reporting him as deceased, but there’s a bit of an editing war going on. No source is cited for his death, and and it’s going back and forth.
Once verified, I definitely think the creator of Quicksort deserves a black bar.
Tony Hoare documented almost every form of concurrency primitive that we have in modern software. Pretty much everything prior to Rust's ownership semantics was written down in some form or under another name by Tony in the early 1970's.
It goes a lot further than Quicksort.
Yes, make it black.
I found this link elsewhere. But then I went to his wikipedia page; it doesn't seem to have any mention of date of demise.
Time for a black band.
@dang is there such a thing as a double black bar? Because we need one for Tony.
Tags do nothing, email the mods if desired. Bottom bar has deets (“contact”).
What is a black bar?
when a significant figure in the tech/science community dies, hn will sometimes place a thin black bar at the top of the page in memoriam