Xah Lee, 2009-06-25
Erik Naggum is dead. He's born in 1965, died in 2009, this month. He's 3 years older than me. He's a well known figure in the SGML and Common Lisp communities, and in newsgroup as a major troll.
I wanted to write a essay about it, my impressions of him, our exchanges, ... but it'll take probably a week to write a account or obituary sort of thing in a way that is to my satisfaction. It'll involve digging my unorganized newsgroup archive that are scattered in different places on my hard drive, and endless painful hours in google newsgroup archive search... Seems rather a formidable task, because i want to write it well and fully linked.
For now, see our past exchanges at google group: Source. Roughly, our first exchange is in 1998-01, when i was learning Scheme lisp for the first time and was asking about the cons business.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme, comp.lang.lisp From: Erik Naggum Date: 1998-01-03 Subject: Re: why we have cons? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/72bf71c6e6c81f80
(See also: Xah Lee's Computing Experience Bio)
I read comp.lang.lisp almost exclusively for Erik's posts. (See: Why do I Rant In comp.lang.lisp?) Since he stopped posting in 2004, i have stopped reading comp.lang.lisp. Only started again in maybe 2007 or so, more as a poster than reader now. I clearly remember his last message on comp.lang.lisp. Here:
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp From: Erik Naggum Date: 03 Feb 2004 14:48:22 +0000 Subject: Re: moderation of abuse? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/115c62ec642e392c
According to groups.google.com, there are 338 results of posts in comp.lang.lisp that contains both “naggum” and “xah”. I think that the number of posts i addressed him is probably less than 20, and his reply to me is probably less than 10. During 1998 to 2004 when i read comp.lang.lisp mostly of his posts, i also post maybe a couple a month on average. Most of my posts are trolls (of the good sort (see: Netiquette Anthropology)), and part of it is riding his name, criticizing or making fun of his attackers, and criticizing or lampoon him too. They are mostly not technical. Most are writing exercises too.
Here are few essays i wrote in 2001, 2002 period, that are published on my website that either mentioned Erik or was originally addressing him.
(Note: google group search is quite not reliable or comprehensive, as far as my experience goes in the past couple of years. It used to be very good and quite comprehensive when they first acquired dejanews, because back at that time, the search is quite simple, but now they have all sort of filters and indexes that tries to smart things up and deal with the massiveness (including having to deal with machine generated spams that are probably a significant percentage of newsgroup posts now). It used to be, that if i know a exact sentence or phrase of a post, then i can find the post. But not today. Nor can i find a comprehensive list of my own posts as searched by my email xah@xahlee.org or xahlee@gmail.com.)
In 2004, we made friendship on google's social networking site Orkut. Then, we exchanged instant message a few times. However, he got really pissed and de-friended me. This incident actually made me angry, because, honestly, i felt i was just trying to make a friend, and he is behaving like a complete, motherfucking, ass. According to him, i think he said i offended him by incessantly querying him of his work or invading his privacy without respect, or something of that nature. I don't remember fully now, but i do have everything completely logged. So, i'll have to dig it up and put it here. I was frankly very, very pissed off by this incident. I'm no fucking bugging him about his work or anything. His accusation is totally a shock out of the blue. To even have to defend myself seems silly.
I recall, at the time, i contemplated of writing a full account of it, spending perhaps a day or two to do that, with full records and logs, and publish it on my website and announce it to comp.lang.lisp. Because i felt that his behavior is schizophrenic and totally unreasonable. Also, i was unsure i really want to do that. I recall i thought about it for long. On one hand, i was really pissed and wanted to vent my anger, but on the other hand, i have a discipline of my own to follow, that i should be a loving person, as well powerful and in full control, not some loser who'd trip over a online relationship misstep and cry.
Whatever emotional problem he caused me in our process of getting acquainted as computing professionals or friends, i considered for long whether i should just forgive him. Apparently, he's got severe psychological problems so to speak, of which, his newsgroup behavior is sufficient to certify. So, in the end, i did not write a account of it. I think i might actually have spent a hour or two writing it, but didn't complete or publish it. I'll have to dig all these out someday. (i recall now, that i was angry because in our last im he started to lash out in his typical newsgroup manner at me. I think i was rather quite controlled, and didn't say anything back at him. I just stared at his incoming IM chat with disbelief, although in my mind i have a thousand words racing to tell him to shut the motherfucking up and have a million words followup for explanations and justifications. I was angry because he was a few human animal that i would care to contact, partly precisely because of his lone and unusual personality, and a free thinker, a non-conformist, like myself. The fact i befriend him was partly out of high respect, and in our last couple IM exchange, i was thwarted and taken aback.)
In any case, when we initially hooked up as online friends on orkut, it was pleasant, albeit we exchanged little. He told me he's sick, and now works as some sort of librarian, and can not code much. (something to that effect)
Erik's English vocabulary usage has been used in my English Vocabulary Compendium. In fact, culling his vocabulary usage is one of the major reason i read him. Here are the entries from his writings.
scaremonger
out of the woodwork
steamroll
logorrhea
ascetic
ipso facto
wherewithal
defeatist
minutiae
On the web, you see a lot blogs saying such things as “passing of a giant” or other similar statement about how Erik is a computing God of sorts or genius. I don't regard Erik as some kinda god for his computing knowledge. Among human animal's history, in the field of theoretical computer science or practical programing, in this century, if you multiply Erik's contributions 2 fold, he probably wouldn't have a place. So, the bunch of tech geekers online praising Erik being some sort of genius, is too exaggerated. (they do that partly because Erik is dead. Human animals, especially males, love to approve people when they are dead. All those eulogies and posthumous awards and memorials fuck. (See: Support Living Artists))
Erik's social insights, as far as i've read from 1998 to 2002 inclusive (a period i've read ALL his comp.lang.lisp writings), wasn't anything substantial in any academic or science contexts, nor are they particularly award-winning material when judged as a letter of art in academia.
When you evaluate someone's work, especially in the context of a dead person, you have to judge it from the appropriate field or community. So, taken Erik's work into the computer science domain, you might ask, has he invented some notable theory? No. Of his code, are they widely used, praised, or otherwise influential to computing? Well, no. If you survey theoretical computer science, there are probably some tens of thousands papers published each year, and of these, probably less that 0.1% that is actually noteworthy, and of these 0.1%, most are only meaningful to a few human animals in esoteric fields. Erik's life time work, when taken in this context, probably don't even make it into that 0.1% barely noteworthy. Now on the aspect of industrial code, there is a designer or coders behind every protocol and its implementation (say the whole TCP/IP protocol suite and apps), languages (tens of general popular ones or hundreds of notable domain specific ones), software (say, the well known web browsers, email apps, IM/IRC programs, notable websites (e.g. top 5000 trafficked sites), encryption software, banking software, tele-communication software, software in commerce, business software such as spreadsheets and word processors, scientific software from calculators to weather prediction... There are probably few hundred thousand software that are used by significant number of people today), each one of these software, has a person (or more) that actually coded it. Consider Erik's contribution to humanity in terms of software he's written, then it's probably nowhere notable. As a more concrete example, today google has maybe a hundred or more technologies and services, e.g. google chrome, gmail, google news, google sites, webmaster tools, analytics, google code, google groups, orkut social networking site, blogger, google docs, igoogle, google talk, google books, youtube, AdSense ... and so on. Some of these, are written by a single programer, or few lead programers. Any one of these people, probably has equal, if not more significance, than the code Erik's written in his lifetime. Google is just one company, among the top Fortune 500 or fortunate 10 hundred thousand successful tech companies. Each company, probably has 10 or hundreds notable lead programers, technologists, research scientists, “fellows”. When you consider this, you can see that Erik's code, however fantastic, but in the sense of posthumous evaluation, probably isn't anywhere notable.
A lot people say Erik has important insight. I don't deny it. After all, he is the person i read in comp.lang.lisp for several years. But if we seriously want to evaluate the quality of his contributions, his insights in his newsgroup rants, are not good criticism proper. His rants are often technically incoherent. For example, this piece of criticism on XML that is one of the more well known among his postings:
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp From: Erik Naggum Date: 28 Dec 2002 03:08:55 +0000 Subject: Re: S-exp vs XML, HTML, LaTeX (was: Why lisp is growing) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/9a30c508201627ee (local copy: erik_naggum_on_xml.txt)
Out of the 2.7k words, close to half is irrelevant rant on human animals, of babies, breasts, rape, American male, George Bush the motherfucker... If we remove these, and look at his technical content, they are mostly opinions, and not that informative, coherent, or valuable. This piece, at best, is a brilliant rant, but nowhere comes close as a brilliant tech commentary, criticism on XML, history of SGML, nor as a good piece of myth-debunking on XML/SGML for practicing web professionals.
A criticism is not just a list of wise edicts. Perhaps his items are truely on the spot, but a good criticism must give details to backup the argument, and consider issues from many aspects, such as technical, social, theoretical, practical. Or, it must at least delve into a particular aspect or item in depth. Erik's XML rant fails this in many ways, it is simply too short and too unfocused. For example, he did not consider any social aspects of why XML is going the way it is, why people at W3C are becoming stupid as he asserts, he didn't outline any possible relevant history of anything, he did not expound any item in detail, he did not give any overview of SGML in the context of XML or vice versa ... All he did, is giving a list of items with a couple sentences long reason for each. However seemingly wise and insightful those comments are, it is not sufficient to qualify it as a good criticism. However you dice it, his writings at best is in the category of rants and ravings and creative writings than criticism proper or educational or informative value.
His, perhaps only, well-known published piece in some professional context, is about date format. The Long, Painful History of Time (1999-10) by Erik Naggum. http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html. I recall, i read it twice in separate years. I wasn't particularly impressed. At best, its value is about as great as some good piece of RFC writing, and there are few thousands of RFCs, and there are some millions of good tech documents like that. The number of people who has written tens of such good tech pieces, easily number in tens of thousands, and these people are not particularly considered geniuses or notable award winners.
Note also that i think Erik sometimes attacked technologies that he later may have changed his stance. I recall, he has written raving pieces against unicode (dated late 1990s i think), in his typical fashion, calling it a piece of fucking shit or political disruption or something to that effect.
According to Wikipedia, Erik has contributed significantly to emacs. Quote:
Erik Naggum contributed to the free software project Emacs text editor for almost a decade.[8].
The citation “[8]”, is one of Erik's own posting:
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp From: Erik Naggum Date: 24 Aug 2002 04:05:25 +0000 Subject: Re: The Next Generation of Lisp Programmers http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e239591cbc9eb18d
in which Erik touches on his accomplishments himself.
I have become a emacs lisp programer since 2006. I recall, in ~2008, out of boredom and curiosity, i tried to check what code Erik has put in emacs. My check is only casual and not in anyway thorough or as research, but i recall, all i can find on the surface is one obscure lisp package, i think it was related to date time format. (Addendum: Daniel Herring wrote “Erik authored roughly 176 emacs commits, most of which were small bugfixes. Not a prolific coder, Erik definitely cared about details, often cleaning up after RMS himself.” Source. Also, i recall, Erik used to maintain a emacs version without the MULE package. (MULE is a hack to support multi-type, before Unicode became popular. Erik considered MULE severely damaging.) Erik also had a project to write a Common Lisp based emacs more or less from scratch, but it was abandoned; i recall seeing him bitching about the ratio of effort/value being too high. For some more detail, see: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-ja/ErikNaggum)
Here a thread where Erik explains and argues about MULE. It showcases his decade long experience in working with ISO standards and charsets. It reads very informative, but is actually quite incomprehensible to me, unless you have dedicated expertise in area of ISO, charsets, encodings, font.
Newsgroups: comp.emacs From: Erik Naggum Date: 1997-06-04 Subject: Re: Mule vs Unicode; was Re: 19.35 --- when? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/browse_frm/thread/81eeecca2abba32f
I also recall, that Erik doesn't give a shit about Xemacs during the heated years of the GNU emacs vs Xemacs war (this period is roughly ~1990 to ~2004). During that time i was reading Erik (1998 to 2003), Xemacs in my opinion, is much more robust and useful than emacs. (See: My Experience of Emacs vs XEmacs) So, this is a tech issue that i find Erik's opinion directly contrary to my own experience in a area i have expertise. (even consider that much of his misgivings about xemacs may be founded on political aspects, i'm more inclined to side with the Lucid/Xemacs on political or social aspects too.)
After all things said, i definitely think that Erik's contribution to society is probably more valuable than average professors, and his computing knowledge, his code contribution, is within the top 10% of notable programers. Certainly, Erik is above average in IQ, and his knowledge in computing, the amount of literature he has read, about computing or about human animal society, i'd think to be among the top 0.1% of college educated population. Erik, being a unique personality, independent thinker, and his wayward mannerism and English mastery in the online world by his rants and ravings, had notable influences to some segment of the computing community, in particular, SGML and Common Lisp (for good or bad). He certainly has influenced my thoughts.
Although i think all of my posts regarding Erik are rather positive or supportive (while he's alive), and he was the only reason i read comp.lang.lisp, however, his newsgroup behavior is really mean, base, despicable. My principle of life is love and knowledge. (See: (Knowledge + Love) / Disrespectfulness) I may hate unix, tech geeking ignoramuses, or think that Larry Wall is a criminal (e.g. Larry Wall and Cults), but these are expressions of hatred toward things, toward behaviors, criticisms of celebrities. In a term of social law, they are “of public interest”. In particular, i don't hate in the fucking American's blown-up sensibilities of so-called “hate crime”, where any essay that can be intepreted by minority groups as negative are taken to be hate crime, any non-careful negative commentary on religion is “hate crime” (fuck the American motherfuckers that are typically well-to-do WASPs). Newsgroup's culture has always been harsh and pissing-fights are its daily rituals among participants. However, Erik has the energy to keep on and on attacking individuals in a personal way, on any nameless joe, he'd spend tens of hours, insulting their moms, devising ever more creative writings telling them to kill themselfs (literally). In reading the sheer quantities of such posts, and you can tell that some (or most) of them are simply pure hatred. Quite ugly and bothersome to see. I don't know if Erik truely wished death or mishap to happen to his antagonists, but his writings, express exactly that.
On the other hand, i think most of Erik's views are shared and vehemently expressed by me. We both hated Perl, TeX/LaTeX, unix, to extreme degrees. (See: Pathetically Elational Regex Language, The TeX Pestilence, The Unix Pestilence ) And, we both HATE moralists, and are not afraid to express it.
I miss Erik, if for anything, for losing a non-conformist compatriot, a free thinker.
Some other online postings about Erik, from people who are mutual acquaintance with me:
Some other online postings about Erik, from people who are not my personal acquaintances.
Addendum:
Archive of comp.lang.lisp and comp.lang.scheme is available, thanks to Ron Garret for getting it & Eli Barzilay for hosting.
The comp.lang.lisp archive covers from 1987-03 to 2009-07. The comp.lang.scheme archive covers from 1988-09 to 2009-07.
Related essays: