Talk:Guy L. Steele Jr.

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)

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)

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)

http://catalog.loc.gov/ says he was born in 1954. That matches 17 in 1972. Do we have any reason to doubt this? --LA2 (talk) 21:18, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9905/05/1955.idg/ says 1955. — Miym (talk) 00:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

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)

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)

Software patents
Is it true he used to be a supporter of the League for Programming Freedom but is a patent holder. What patents does he hold? --Ashawley (talk) 14:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)