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Computer Pioneer Bob Bemer Dies

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the riderless-horse dept.

tpconcannon writes "Bob Bemer, the man who helped introduce the backslash as well as the escape key to computing, has passed away at his home at the age of 78. He also helped develop ASCII during the 60's at IBM. More interesting is that he predicted the Y2K bug all the way back in 1971!"

10 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. That Y2K thingy... by sljgh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Predicted it back in '71? That seems like something a smart person would do, shame the rest of us didn't follow up on it before 30 years later.

    1. Re:That Y2K thingy... by mcrbids · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes I know that in the few cases that it mattered it was fixed, but Y2K was blown way out of proportion by everyone, including some very smart people, it just wasn't that big of a deal.

      I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Y2K went smoothly very much because everybody made sure it did. Many, many very real issues were discovered and addressed. I've seen plenty of the dry runs done, and the results were quite depressing, to say the least.

      After checking everything over, I had my networks and clientelle upgraded where necessary, and only one relatively unimportant system went down. (and it came up fine the next morning)

      Don't think that just because nothing major happened, that nothing major WOULD HAVE happened... lots of good people made sure it went OK.

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    2. Re:That Y2K thingy... by Brandon+Glass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm sure that all the programmers who worked 20 hours a day to fix many of the problems, and the governments worldwide who allocated billions to fund plans to fix these problems would be thrilled to hear you say that Y2K "just wasn't that big a deal".

      Yes, the problems were blown out of proportion by some people (Gary North, for example), but ignoring the real issues that did exist at the time is just as stupid. I don't think it would have been apocalyptic if these issues weren't addressed as they were, but it would certainly be a huge headache, especially in the financial and business sectors. The amount of private contracts that I and a lot of people that I know got for converting legacy DOS apps to Windows or Linux (the two most common) would probably surprise you. A lot of them didn't even have the source code, so complete re-writes were neccessary.

      --
      Brandon Glass's personal site.
  2. Sounds Like... by Snagle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The guy must have been lucky or just had a lot of foresight. We could all pretend to act like we knew who he was and say he'll be missed but that would be a lie so let's just give him credit for his contributions. He gets an "A" in my book for thinking up "Esc" and "\", unlike the bastard who invented "CAPS LOCK" !!!

  3. Re:What Y2K bug? by QuasiCoLtd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lovely troll. I'm sure the thousands of programmers who worked many countles nights and weekends to make sure that "nothing happened" appreciate you writing their work off so lightly. Ever stop to the that the reason nothing happened is because of these people, not despite them?

  4. Re:82 73 80 by MalleusEBHC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please, this man is a geek and deserves to be thusly honored.

    0x52 0x49 0x50

  5. Re:He was 84, not 78 by f1ipf10p · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You complain (rightly so) about one day on Slashdot... imagine how Bob must have felt after 29 years of undestanding the Y2K problem with very few others listening. Not to mention his ASCII vs. EBCDIC struggle within IBM, or the value of higher level languages. \* although I prefer C to COBOL *\ Welcome to the world of the bell curve.

    --
    ~8^]
  6. Goodbye Bob by f1ipf10p · · Score: 5, Insightful

    EBCDIC to ASCII was as big a step as ASCII to Unicode. I hope that Bob's next step is even bigger. May he join that big computer in the sky and have restful NOOP's;

    from my (limited) COBOL days-

    CLOSE mName-# BobBemer

    Thanks Bob.

    --
    ~8^]
  7. Re:Y2K Prediction by ezHiker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It comes down to not giving a shit about things years in the future in order to satisfy immediate needs or desires.
    Well... not exactly. In 1971 (or in 1981 for that matter), computers didn't have a lot of memory. Writing code with 2-digit years could save what was then a lot of memory, and I'd bet that most of the programmers figured that their software would either be obsolete or re-written by the time 2000 came around. For the most part, they were right.

  8. Re:Y2K Prediction by mark-t · · Score: 4, Insightful
    You are right... the problem was memory.

    And using 2 digit years was a perfectly acceptable solution for the time.

    The only serious mistake they made was not in using 2 digit years, but in failing to create sufficient abstraction around the concept of a date that it was not possible to change the underlying implementation of a date without being forced to rewrite the software which was dependant on it. Data conversion would probably still have been required, but that could have been automated.

    Of course, if they had done this in the first place. COBOL programmers wouldn't have been able to demand nearly as much of a salary as they did in the late 90's. Hmm... I smell a conspiracy. :)

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'