Comment by hellbannedguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hellbannedguy | Hacker News Reader

Jim Fox was a key programmer for WordStar. He never got much credit. I guess because he was just an employee.

Jim thought, and talked about WordStar up until his death a few years ago on the streets of San Rafael.

I’m posting this because he would want it. Jim was so proud of his contributions to WordStar, and told anyone who was within speaking distance. Jim was pretty happy guy, but couldn’t find work, and wasn’t near crazy enough to get SSI. He was just a bit different (only different after being on the streets. He once told me, a year on the street, and the mind goes. (I didn’t see anything wrong with his mind though), and getting a programming job after 45 is difficult?

He told me a a small company (called a Startup now) hired him, but they didn’t give him time catch up. He was homeless for years, and his skills were rusty, and his suit was from a Goodwill drop box. He told me, “I was almost up to speed, and feel like I will be contributing soon.” A week later he was back in his Penguin Suit doing dances for change in downtown San Rafael. He was also the Webmaster for the Coastal Post in Bolinas. They couldn’t pay him, and he was fine with that. He also had some good ideas, but people didn’t take him serious? He had a website called Cyberthings.

I’m writing this because I heard about WordStar so much, and I like Jim. People called him eccentric, but he just didn’t have a home. Jim knew a lot of people. A couple of wealthy guys let Jim sleep on their property, but the wives didn’t like him there. I get it. It’s still a responsibility to have a homeless guy camping on your property. Jim always graciously left if asked, and never held a grudge. He used to say to me, “I just don’t want to die of pneumonia on one of these cold side streets.” I never knew what to say.

I writing this because I read he died a few years ago, and miss the guy. The San Rafael police went out of their way to mess with him. Instead of helping, they just wanted to nail him for anything. He once got a Jaywalking ticket after asking a cop to retrieve his stolen laptop. The cop said no, so Jim walked across the street. The cop crossed the street, and gave him a ticket.

Sorry for rambling. Not in a great mood.

Wow, that is touching. I remember seeing the name "Jim Fox" when using Wordstar back when I was in school in India in 1997.

As a kid I thought it was a pseudonym. I did at some point wonder, what he went on to build. Your description of what he was going through, makes me hope that his memory will be well honored.

Your rambling is very much appreciated. I'm terribly sorry to hear about Jim Fox, it is often those who are the real knowledge behind development that get lost or left behind for a multitude of reasons, which, more often than not, are problems or a fallout with financial backers, entrepreneurs or it's the work of ruthless competitors. Unfortunately, this happens not only in programming and IT but in every endeavor imaginable. Other names in the IT game that immediately come to mind that fit this description are Gary Kildall, Phil Katz and Aaron Swartz; they all deserved a much better run.

I mentioned here in another post that I used to use WordStar to write/edit assembly (ASM) as well as high-level languages source files and the illustration I've used is an excerpt from the BIOS of my Godbout CompuPro 816 S-100 8085/8086 dual boot computer. You mentioned Jim Fox for a very good reason and I similarly do so for Bill Godbout who died tragically in the Camp fire in November 2018. You'll be aware of the fire but some who are not in CA may not be:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/25/camp-fire-d...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Godbout

http://vcfed.org/wp/2018/11/13/r-i-p-bill-godbout-79/

Bill Godbout may not have remembered me but I certainly remember him. I met him in Anaheim at a computer conference and I talked with him for ages about CompuPro and his S-100 boards—I even recall a three-way conversation with him when someone inquired about the reliability of his memory boards. The conversation revolved around a then common concern about the potential for new high speed RAM with a clock speed of 20MHz [wow!] in that stray random alpha particles may cause memory errors and thus we should always employ parity checking to avoid the problems. In fact, it was Bill who actually raised the matter.

He was a very pleasant and helpful guy and I'm so pleased to have met him. To think he died in a fire—in one of the most horrible ways imaginable—is hard to contemplate. It is especially hard and upsetting when the person who has died is not just another statistic but someone one can actually put a face to.

Re Jim Fox again, I recall another conversation not with Rubinstein but with a local WordStar agent around the time of the release of WordStar 2000 but mainly about the development of version 7 and earlier (as that's where my interests were). He told me much about it and I'm now racking my brain to remember what he said. The only thing that comes to mind was that it was mainly the work of one person (this seemed a bit strange to me as I thought that MicroPro would have had many more programmers). I also seem to recall an article about the development of WordStar written by either Jerry Pournelle of Byte fame (who had a CompuPro system) or perhaps it was in InfoWorld. It's a damn nuisance I can't remember.

To your list of misfits contributing greatly whilst treated poorly, I'd add Ian Murdoch.

last tweet messages:

https://archive.is/vBS6N

That is incredibly disturbing to read.

I'm glad I did though.

Yeah, Murdoch's death was a real tragedy, he died far too young.

When one takes a moment to look one finds that there are far too many brilliant minds that fall into this misfit category. Often they are their own worst enemy and the world doesn't respond kindly to the fact.

Another worth noting is Oliver Heaviside. He's almost forgotten these days and much of the fact was of his own making (his name really should be more prominent). Yet he reformulated Maxwell's equations into the four that we know and use today; he gave us coaxial cable, figured out impedance matching on telephony lines, essentially invented vector calculus (along with Josiah Willard Gibbs who did so independently on the US side of the Atlantic), and much, much more. Essentially, Heaviside put the finishing touches on mathematics and classical electromagnetic theory just in time and ready for the quantum mob to take over.

That said, he had little idea how to handle the scientific establishment and he was always the outsider. It's worth taking a moment to read his Wiki bio:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside

Another tragic case is this damn, damn stupid boy (he was hardly more than one and clearly acted like one):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89variste_Galois

Galois was dead at the age of just 20 through his own utter stupidity. To have such a great mind to leave the planet at this age is almost incalculable - in fact, he died 15 years younger than did Mozart (and we continually lament his death at such a young age).

I'd heard of Heaviside, but only recently got the beginnings of an appreciation for what he did and who he was through a series of YouTube videos by a retired, decidedly eccentric, but so far as I can tell largely legit retired GE electrical engineer, Eric Dollard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiDnheGvXRA

(My own assessment abilities are limited here, though spot-checking so far has confirmed statements and content.)

That's interesting, I'd not seen that video before.

I have the excellent book and bio on Heaviside titled Oliver Heaviside: The Life, Work, and Times of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age by Paul J. Nahin. I'm not suggesting you buy it but it's a good reference to look up when you're next in a library.

Also, it's a very worthwhile exercise to download copies of Heaviside's books from the Internet Archive (there are about five or so and several come in multiple volumes). They're all out of copyright so they won't cost anything.

I'm not suggesting you read them through seriously but if you just peruse them for a while then you'll soon learn what a genius he was.

Within minutes, you'll get the message that he doesn't abide fools well and that he was not averse to making side comments in his textbooks (actually I find that aspect of his writing interesting because you get the gist of how he's thinking), but overall you'll be taken aback at his rigor. These books were written around 120-140 years ago, if you put them under a modern cover and you weren't overly famimiar with the subject then you could be forgiven for thinking that they were written yesterday.

Remember Heaviside also invented vector calculus and much of the modern electrical terminology such as impedance, conductance, admittance, permeability and permittivity, etc. It's amazing, but these terms are all now commonplace in our testbooks. I cannot recall of any other person who has introduced so many new scientific terms to science and engineering as Heaviside did.

You're correct, he was eccentric especially towards the end of his life. I reckon I'd likely have had an argument with him within minutes of meeting him but that's irrelevant here, it's the content of technical mind that we're interested in. Remember, he wasn't the only genius with an awkward temperament, from many accounts Issac Newton was likely much worse - and often petty minded into the bargin.

No need to say sorry, I would have never known. A guy who wrote an important piece of history died on the streets ? What a shame !

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