[ale] Sublime to Ridiculous - Nygaard obituary from today's AP

[John Mills]

ALErs -

Here is a copy of the obituary for Kristen Nygaard from today's Atlanta
_Journal_Constitution_. Somehow crediting him with the underlying concepts
of MS-DOS, and thereby the foundation of the InterNet compares for me to
crediting Gallileo with the Ptolomaic[sp?] theory of astronomy - sun and
planets revolve around Earth - and thus the foundation of space travel.
&8-P

Anyway:
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OBITUARIES: NORWAY: Kristin Nygaard, 75, software pioneer
 Associated Press
 Tuesday, August 13, 2002

 Oslo, Norway --- Kristen Nygaard, a pioneer in developing programming
language for computers who helped lay the basis for the Internet, died of
a heart attack Saturday in Oslo. He was 75.

 The University of Oslo professor was acclaimed internationally for his
work in developing the programming language Simula that laid the basis for
MS-DOS and the Internet.

 He and his colleague Ole-Johan Dahl, who died in June, were presented the
2001 A.M. Turing Award and other prizes for their role in the invention of
object-oriented programming at the Norwegian Computing Center from 1961 to
1967. 

 The Association for Computing Machinery, which awarded the prize, said
the work paved the way for the widely used programming languages Java, C++
and others used in personal computers and home entertainment devices.

 "Their work has led to a fundamental change in how software systems are
designed and programmed, resulting in reusable, reliable, scalable
applications," according to the citation.

 The first models of Simula --- an abbreviation for simulation language
--- were for calculators, but later editions became the basis for
icon-based programming language on which the Internet and MS-DOS are
built.

 Mr. Nygaard also helped spearhead the successful 1994 campaign against
Norway's membership in the European Union, which involved holding together
groups ranging from conservative farmers to leftist trade unionists.

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 - John Mills


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