[HN Gopher] Eric Engstrom, co-creator of DirectX, passes away at 55
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Eric Engstrom, co-creator of DirectX, passes away at 55
Author : WalterBright
Score : 62 points
Date : 2020-12-14 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've known Eric since around 1985 or so when he came to work at
| Data I/O. Our friendship has ebbed and flowed over the years, but
| he's always been special to me.
|
| I have a little anecdote to share that probably only I remember
| now, but it has always made me laugh and shows what an unusual
| thinker he was.
|
| When he was first working at Microsoft around 1991 or 92, he was
| talking to a manager who had a problem. There was a program
| written in assembler language, about 50k in size or so. The
| program had a problem that needed to be fixed. The author no
| longer worked at Microsoft. The manager had repeatedly assigned
| various programmers the task of fixing it, and they'd all given
| up after days of effort.
|
| The trouble was the author had used the macro language that came
| with the assembler to invent his own quirky, weird, undocumented
| and thoroughly impenetrable language. None of the programmers
| could figure it out. He was lamenting that he'd have to assign a
| programmer to recreating it from scratch, which would take months
| and cost a lot of money.
|
| Eric says "I can fix it".
|
| In 2 hours, he had it all fixed and checked back into the system.
|
| The manager, astonished, asked: "how did you figure out the
| author's language?"
|
| Eric: "I didn't. I disassembled the binaries using Walter's
| disassembler [a disassembler turns binary code back into source
| assembler code]. The problem was then obvious, I fixed it and
| checked the new source code back in!"
|
| Eric then laughed uproariously, and so did I. Nobody but Eric
| would have thought of that shortcut to solve the problem. If he
| couldn't break through the wall, he'd go over it, under it, or
| around it. He was always like that.
|
| I'll miss him a lot.
| idclip wrote:
| And an absolute monster.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Can you tell us what this giant asm macro program was?
| monocasa wrote:
| FWIW, most large asm programs from back in the day relied
| heavily on macros just to have some semblance of abstraction.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I don't think Eric told me, and if he did, I forgot. In those
| days asm was often used for efficiency, as compilers weren't
| that good compared to hand-coded asm. He knew I'd purposely
| written the disassembler to produce MASM source code, and
| thought I'd enjoy hearing about the use he put it to (and I
| did!).
|
| BTW, this anecdote is one of the reasons that I've strongly
| resisted adding macros to D.
| blinkingled wrote:
| > He died at a hospital in Seattle. His wife, Cindy Engstrom,
| said he had injured one of his feet in October, accidentally took
| too much Tylenol for pain relief and suffered liver damage.
|
| As sad as it is to lose a person at age 55, it's even harder to
| digest the tylenol induced liver failure part until you
| experience foot injury/pain. I spent last December in
| excruciating foot pain that came out of nowhere and the thought
| of wanting to guzzle down entire bottle of Advil/Tylenol touched
| my mind at least couple times.
|
| Anyway, RIP. Old interview with him -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjZWUweIIEU
| smabie wrote:
| Doubtful. He was probably addicted to vicodin or some other
| opiate that is mixed with tylenol
| neogodless wrote:
| Off topic:
|
| Did you identify the problem? Was it gout?
|
| It seems awfully silly for a random internet stranger to
| diagnose your issue from "excruciating foot pain that came out
| of nowhere" but...
|
| I had basically that off and on again for seven years before it
| was correctly diagnosed and treated. (As a healthy, active,
| relatively young person, gout wasn't suspected, but eventually
| an MRI gave a clue, and blood tests confirmed it.)
| blinkingled wrote:
| I got an X-Ray and it showed nothing. The doctor basically
| thought I was there to score narcotics but he wasn't going to
| get me any (I wasn't looking for them either but was told to
| eat Turmeric pills believe it or not - I did and don't have
| any way to know if it helped.)
|
| Does gout come and go - I have not had trouble since then. If
| it returns I will be sure to do a blood test - and I really
| appreciate you asking. I am always for problem solving with
| or without strangers help :)
| jychang wrote:
| Holy shit. That's insane. People don't realize how terrible it
| is to die from tylenol induced liver damage. That's often
| considered one of the worst ways to commit suicide. You're in
| an incredible amount of pain for a long time.
| I_Suleiman wrote:
| Why would some think excessive Tylenol would be preferable over
| narcotic pain meds How much Tylenol would a person have to
| consume over a two month period to permanently damage their
| liver This is bizarre.
| monocasa wrote:
| I've seen probably a dozen people in my high school class die
| from their narcotic pain meds originally prescribed to them.
| I only took a quarter of what was prescribed after surgery
| from shattering my leg, and yet weening off was worse than
| the pain from the injury.
|
| I don't blame him for the choices he made, having been there.
| blinkingled wrote:
| In my case I went to the doctor only after trying to bear it
| for as long as I can - they did an x-ray and said there's
| nothing wrong with your foot and you'll just have to ride it
| for some days. Heck the doctor asked me to eat Turmeric pills
| - not even kidding. He made sure I wasn't getting a narcotic
| - and I wasn't looking for it because I am really afraid of
| side effects. (My wife is the same way - brave woman went
| without touching the narcotic meds after tooth removal.)
|
| That pretty much leaves you with OTC pain meds - I know in
| these cases probably narcotics of the right kind in
| restricted doses sound much better but I am just truly afraid
| of side effects because of what we saw earlier in life.
| quicklyfrozen wrote:
| I know someone who ended up hospitalized from accidentally
| taking two over-the-counter meds that both contained Tylenol.
| It just doesn't take that much to cause damage.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Honestly, this one does surprise me. American doctors give
| out opioids like nobody's business. They give you narcotic
| painkillers for post-tooth-extraction pain! That's
| ridiculous! The problem, I think, is that many people are
| foolish enough to "return their unused prescription". I never
| do that. I make sure to retain unused drugs to their true
| expiry.
|
| It must have been really quite painful. Still, I'd strongly
| recommend keeping drugs of all manner handy if you've got
| good self-control around them. They have high utility.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| It's quite common. At least in Europe, available sizes of
| Paracetamol were severely limited not too long ago because it
| was the leading cause of overdose deaths.
|
| Individual risk isn't exactly high, but OTC painkillers are
| ubiquitous.
|
| Both accidents and suicide attempts are/were frequent. It's a
| rather terrible way to die, IIRC, with excruciating pain and
| entirely too much time to regret the decision/accident.
| 1996 wrote:
| Just consuming more than 4g on one day may be enough to start
| the liver failure, especially if using alcohol or other
| drugs.
|
| Protip: have some N acetyl cysteine handy. It's freely
| available on amazon, and it protects your liver from
| acetaminophen abuse (and helps rebound faster the next day
| after a night of heavy drinking, but the FDA absolutely hates
| when people mention that :-)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Appreciate this comment. If you have this on hand, how do
| you know if and when to administer?
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Not a doctor. I just take it when I feel shitty. I figure
| there is a correlation between not feeling great and
| oxidative stress in my whole system.
| AdamN wrote:
| Many stronger drugs have acetaminophen in them. I've tried
| oxycontin and had very little benefit. People should know for
| themselves what works for their pain but never underestimate
| the damage drugs can do, even if they're over the counter.
| agytvfr wrote:
| > How much Tylenol would a person have to consume over a two
| month period to permanently damage their liver
|
| Liver damage can occur after a single incident. People have
| died from single time overdoses of paracetamol. There is a
| quick fix in an ER of giving NAC which can help eliminate
| most of the damage, but there is a small window(a day or two)
| where it is effective.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I have a load of NAC on hand. Would it be a good idea to
| take it whenever I take Tylenol? I can't imagine a pharma
| pathway that would result in it attenuating the painkiller
| effect. Just mop up the oxidative damage.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Read the label. Switch to Aspirin, either completely or
| half/half. If possible, try fixing the underlying
| problem, not the pain.
| 1996 wrote:
| The lack of easy access to strong painkillers kills people,
| driven to extreme by the madness of pain.
|
| Yet we only talk about the evil of drugs, and the opioids
| epidemic.
| AdamN wrote:
| Tylenol is really not to be abused. Much better to go heavy
| with Ibuprofen and remember the old-time drugs like aspirin as
| well as new ones like naproxen.
|
| But really a doctor/nurse is critical if the pain is going on
| for more than a day or two.
| shock wrote:
| > Much better to go heavy with Ibuprofen
|
| Do you know that Ibuprofen can cause morphological changes in
| the testes? I wouldn't call that much better...
| khuey wrote:
| It's a lot easier to live without testicles than without a
| liver.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Non-paywalled obit (heavy on ads unfortunately, quite a bit of
| detail though):
|
| https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/07/friends-remember-microsof...
|
| _Engstrom was happiest working in his lab. His death came from
| medical complications related to an accident in the lab, after he
| dropped a monitor on his foot._
|
| _His friend, St. John, managed to get permission to visit
| Engstrom and deliver some blood collection kit vials to him so he
| could extract his blood and DNA for cryogenic cold storage._
|
| _"We're going to get a full genetic sequence of Eric's DNA," St.
| John said. "Eric's going to live on forever."_
|
| _St. John played Viking music at the end of the service._
| ddevault wrote:
| Note, this is not Eric Engestrom, who works on Mesa and OpenGL -
| I was confused at first.
|
| Sympathies to the family. 55 is far too young.
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