Cud Chewers

"Out standing in our own field!"

This category is in 'honor' of those people who may have at one time been quite productive in the field of software design and related fields, but although they may still have the ability to keep producing the big ideas, for some reason they just seem to be standing around 'chewing the cud' of whatever field they've led the way in previously.

Sounds more like sour grapes to me. (,said the Fox)

Please keep in mind that if a person is just too dead or otherwise incapable of pursuing what dragons may have been pursued in the past, that person doesn't count. It wouldn't be sporting. For example: let's say the person in question has grown old and his/her mind just isn't capable of splitting mountains in twain --please leave that one alone.

• Also keep in mind that often persons of otherwise unremarkable ability (just like you and me) are thrust into the limelight by circumstances. There are many one-hit-wonders in the entertainment (music, acting, sports) world; it shouldn't be surprising to see them in the computer science field.

• And, keep in mind that people may choose to do something else. Did Cat Stevens abandon his career as a rock star because he suddenly could no longer hack it as a musician? No; because he had a religious conversion and found his prior career incompatible with his new-found faith (Islam in this case).

• [Meow, hiss! Catty. So his final album sucked, eh? Which one was that?] Would we be discussing "Foreigner"? That whole album sounded like the Cat man was smoking a little too much ganja. Utterly no comment whatsoever was intended about the final album of Cat Stevens (nowadays Yusaf Islam); the point is he abandoned his recording career for reasons unrelated to his abilities as a musician. Perhaps the above sentence could be phrased better. Perhaps, but not very likely. We all recognized and appreciated the change that the former Cat Stevens went through and why he gave up making "pop" music; however, that does not disqualify the analysis that his final work lacked anything of the quality of his previous efforts.

Examples:

• GeorgeLucas got his grass and has been chewing it for quite some time now.
  • Or smoking it. Would explain the dreadfulness of two certain recent films....
• AlanKay, created Smalltalk in the late 70s and early 80s. Went on to chew his cud in the 90s by recreating Smalltalk for Apple. Since then, has been working on a do-nothing project called OpenCroquet. It's an application that literally does nothing. A far cry from his early DynaBook dreams. The cud-chewer's cud-chewer.
• RichardStallman created Emacs, the GPL and FSF in the 80s and early 90s. Hasn't done anything other than head the FSF since then.
• RichardGabriel
• DennisRitchie worked on CeeLanguage and UnixOs early on. He's now cud-chewing by reimplementing Unix "as it should've been" (in his own words) under the PlanNine and InfernoOs projects.
• AndrewLloydWebber. Wrote several musicals in the 70's and 80's, got rich, and has been collecting royalties ever since. His longtime collaborator, lyricist TimRice, is at least still in the musical business; now collaborating with EltonJohn in such things as Aida and TheLionKing (both the film and the Broadway show).
  • Of course, some prefer that Lloyd-Webber stay retired...

Disputed:

• WolfgangAmadeusMozart may have been long-winded, but was composing wonderful music from his toddler years right up to his death.Certainly not a cud-chewer.
• DougEngelbart, he seems to have completely left computer science to pursue other things. Not a cud-chewer.
• BillGates made his pile, but he's still quite active in business and as far as I know he's still programming, so he isn't a cow.
• ChuckMoore, designed ForthLanguage in the 1970s
  • I'm not myself a ColorForth fan, but doesn't that nonetheless disqualify him for the list?
  • Not to mention his main career: CPU design. I mean, he wrote his own CAD system and development environment to push the boundaries in this field. Way more continuously active than many in academia.
• LinusTorvalds created and coordinated an ArmyOfProgrammers to reimplement Unix in the early 1990s. Now it's done and there's nothing left to do. Linux simply isn't a management challenge and Linus' political position is secure, yet Linus has not even attempted anything else of significance since then. He's cud-chewing.
  • On the contrary, there's a lot left to do, and Linux community is working on it, with Linus in the lead. True asynchronuous IO, better multi-processing, rewriting the kernel to minimize the non-reentrant, non-interruptible sections, this is something that cannot be classified as reimplementing Unix. The historical Unix has never had what it takes, and while from an engineering perspective it was more than good enough for its purpose, from a computing science perspective it was obsolete at the time it appeared and its variants remained complacent in that obsolescence for 2 decades.

Elsewhere it's been said that there aren't any examples of people who produce another big breakthrough later in life after doing so early on, so isn't this merely a list of people who did something early on?

• The subject is in regard to people who have done something big and then for no good reason just sat there milking it, never producing anything else of any merit (other than being extraordinarily lazy), while making a career out of basking in their past glory. Just because someone has only one crowning achievement doesn't mean they belong on the list; rather it's those who achieve one great thing and then think the world owes 'em a seat on the provebial bus, in perpetuity, for that achievement. Many of the "one hit wonders" above have faded from public view and don't expect any special treatment--other than to be left to their own lives in peace. It's the one's who wear out their welcome, time and time again, who belong on the list here.

It's a sort of backhanded compliment to include someone. Better than dismissing their achievements entirely.

No because it's false. There are some people who produced great research throughout their careers. One technique they used was to change fields after they'd exhausted the possibilities in their current one.

Such as? (I'm not disagreeing; I just would like to see a list started)

• LinusPauling -- NobelPrize in Chemistry and later NobelPrize for Peace
• DonKnuth -- Wrote the book(s) on ComputerScience. Oh, and in his spare time revolutionized the craft of computer-based typesetting.
• CarHoare -- Other than NiklausWirth, does anyone have their fingerprints on more production-worthy programming languages? Still going strong at MicrosoftResearch
• GuySteele -- Wrote the book on CommonLisp (literally). Now one of the leading developers of Java. (OK, so his second achievement isn't as quite as grand...)
  • And you've left out what is perhaps Steele's finest achievement, which occurred even before both of those listed here: the invention (with GeraldSussman) of the SchemeLanguage.

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