Talk:Guy L. Steele Jr.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Science and academia work group.
Photo request It is requested that a picture or pictures of this person be included in this article to improve its quality.

Note: Wikipedia's non-free content use policy almost never permits the use of non-free images (such as promotional photos, press photos, screenshots, book covers and similar) to merely show what a living person looks like. Efforts should be made to take a free licensed photo during a public appearance, or obtaining a free content release of an existing photo instead.
Maintenance An appropriate infobox may need to be added to this article, or the current infobox may need to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.

Contents

[edit] Name variants

I did some checking into name variants and found this:

  • Guy Steele - 11,700
  • Guy Steele Jr. - 364
  • Guy L. Steele - 13,900 - 7,750 [next] = 6,150
  • Guy L. Steele Jr. - 7,750.
  • Guy Lewis Steele - 1,290

so technically I guess we ought to use "Guy Steele" but I prefer this name, and I think he does too. Noel 20:48, 14 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I know Quux well and have written several papers with him. He generally calls himself "Guy Steele" but (almost always) signs his papers and books "Guy L. Steele Jr." Note there is no comma between Steele and Jr. He is quite insistent on this as it is the legal spelling of his name. This page's name, I think, needs to reflect this. rpgpoet 6 January 2007

I've moved the page so that it does not have the extraneous comma. --Karnesky 14:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the page should add "as well as GLS" to the "also known as" clause? 70.111.82.203 (talk) 19:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Involvement with Java

I don't think it's true that Seele was asked "early on" to join Joy and the Java thing. I no longer have the ref, but I remember reading him saying he was brought in at the last minute just to be an editor and document the final spec. He certainly had no design input in Java (more's the pity). Somebody check this and refactor the page? --AlainPicard

this is known; but I don't know the exact details.
I attended a talk Guy gave to the Brandeis University CS Department around 1995 about Java. My recollection is that Java already existed when he was brought in, and that he was there to help formalize the language or act as an evangelist for it. --Zippy 04:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC))
That agrees with my fuzzy memory of something I read at the time. The very first edition of the Java language spec book showed GLS's influence: lots of jokes, pop culture references and so on in the index, but not in the body of the book. Sadly, Sun took all the jokes out. (Common Lisp: the Language, second edition is famous for having an index which is longer than the whole "R5RS" spec, but it's also a lot more entertaining!) Cheers, CWC(talk) 08:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Year of birth

Which year was GLS born? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.65.121.239 (talk • contribs) 7 May 2005

See this interesting article, which suggests he was 17 in mid-1972. CWC(talk) 08:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


The article says he graduated from Boston Technical High School in 1972. In the US, High schools run to the 12th grade, so he entered the first grade in 1972-12 = 1960. Typically, in the US at that time-frame, one started grade school when six years of age. That should make his birthday somewhere in 1960-6 = 1954. So, this is 2006. His age is about 2006-1954 = 52 years of age +/- a year. -- LymanSchool 20:35, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contribution to Common Lisp more explicit?

Shouldn't the page state explicitly that Guy Steele was the primary author of the initial Common Lisp specification? (Just saying that he was the author of CLtL does not make that clear to one who doesn't know.) 70.111.170.104 (talk) 19:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unintended rewrite

I just started a small edit to address the good point made by user:70.111.170.104 above ... but I ended up revising and expanding the whole article instead. I'm sure my poorly-planned edit is far from perfect, so please improve my work (particularly the headings).

(BTW, I own copies of the first and third editions of C: A Reference Manual.) Cheers, CWC 14:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It reads well, but it's completely unreferenced. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Good point. My main sources were his bio at Sun (a legit RS) and the forewords to (my own copies of) some of the books he [co]wrote. I've moved the link to his bio at Sun from "External links" to "References" as an interim measure towards proper referencing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris Chittleborough (talk • contribs) 08:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)