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From: mcb@net.bio.net (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: ba.general,soc.net-people,comp.org.usenix,comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Jim Joyce
Message-ID: <Jun.3.16.11.31.1993.18466@net.bio.net>
Date: 3 Jun 93 23:11:31 GMT
Organization: IntelliGenetics, Inc., Mountain View, California, USA
Lines: 84
[I posted this to a number of Jim's friends and acquaintances
yesterday, and several asked if I would share it with a wider audience.]
I am very sorry to bring the news to the net community that Jim Joyce,
well-known and long-time member of the UNIX and Usenet community,
passed away in San Francisco last week (May 27). His obituary was in
yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, and reads as follows:
Joyce, James 'Jim'. In San Francisco, May 27, 1993.
UNIX expert, poet, and scholar, residing in SF for
the last 20 years. Taught at Univ. of Illinois, Univ. of
California, S.F. State, and Stanford. Currently an
international lecturer on UNIX, owner and director of the
Gawain Group and Data Rescue. Survived by his parents Robert
and Adell Joyce, brother Robert, sisters Barbara Granado and
Shirley Devine, and ex-wife, artist Tanya Joyce; also survived
by nieces and grand-nieces.
Friends and colleagues are invited to attend a Celebration of
his life, Friday, June 4, 1993, at 7:00 PM at the Ghia
Gallery, 2648 Third St., San Francisco.
* * *
Some personal notes:
I first met Jim as a sophomore at Berkeley in 1975, when I took his
Computing for the Humanities class, which was done with punch-cards,
FORTRAN, and a CDC 6400. Towards the end of the course he began
talking about a new system called UNIX which ran on a "DEC
minicomputer", and that he hoped to be able to give classes on it
soon. He got me my first job as a reader in the EECS department,
grading programs and papers for his CS 1 FORTRAN class (ugh), and a
couple of years later introduced me to Prof. Brendan O Hehir of the
English department, for whom I did my first real programming work
(with Jim's help) on his _Polyglossary to Finnegans Wake_.
Sometime in the late '70s Jim presented me with an "Official
Card-Carrying UNIX Hacker" card, which I accepted somewhat awkwardly.
Seeing the look on my face, he said, "Well, YOU may think it's
pretentious, but KEN and DENNIS liked theirs JUST FINE."[*] (Oh.).
Jim attended the First West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 and gave a
paper titled "Human Factors in Software Engineering". I just dug a
copy of the proceedings out and read it, and it is as fresh now (gracefully
scaling up the discussion of 8K programs in a 24K address space...) as
it was then.
Later, I had the pleasure of doing some legal work and writing with Jim
and Tanya on their startup UNIX training business, International
Technical Seminars, and in 1983 he gave me my first real-live UUCP/Usenet
account (its!michael) on ITS' Momentum (CompuThink) system. ITS became The
[Independent] UNIX Bookstore, whch could be counted on to be at every
Usenix and Uniforum, and Jim was much in demand as a UNIX lecturer and
trainer. Eventually, with new associates, this metamorphosed into The
Gawain Group.
He lived in a Victorian flat next to Duboce Park in San Francisco that
was completely crammed full of computer paraphernalia, books (of all
kinds), records, art, UNIX memorabilia, and more books. Jim threw great
parties which often mixed hackers, academics, and local folks from the
neighborhood (lower Haight). One of his most famous parties was a
"Bark Mitzvah" (!) on the occasion of the 13th birthday of his beloved
dog Beowulf. (This made Herb Caen's column *and* a local TV news
show.) He had superb taste in food, wine, and single-malt Scotch
whiskies and could hold forth on Chaucer, compilers, or cantatas, and
everything in between.
In recent years we sort of lost track of each other, and though I knew
he had been seriously ill last year, we didn't get a chance to get
together, which I regret very much. We will all miss him.
--
Michael C. Berch
mcb@presto.ig.com / mcb@net.bio.net / mcb@postmodern.com
P.S. Based on some responses when I mailed this out yesterday, I
should mention that I don't have any information about the
circumstances of Jim's passing, nor any details about the Celebration
other than the address/time listed in the Chronicle.
[*] Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, the founders of UNIX.