Joe Armstrong (programmer)
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (February 2023) |
Joe Armstrong | |
|---|---|
| File:An erlang expert and some guy named Joe (4133214882).jpg Armstrong in 2009 | |
| Born | 27 December 1950 Bournemouth, England, UK |
| Died | 20 April 2019 (aged 68) |
| Alma mater | University College London, UK; Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden |
| Occupations | Computer programmer, professor, author |
| Known for | Co-creator of the Erlang programming language |
| Spouse | Helen Taylor |
| Children | Thomas Armstrong, Claire Armstrong |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Edinburgh Ericsson Computer Science Lab KTH |
| Website | joearms |
.jpg){kind=link}
Joseph Leslie Armstrong (27 December 1950 – 20 April 2019) was a computer scientist working in the area of fault-tolerant distributed systems. He is one of the co-designers of the Erlang programming language.
Early life and education
[edit | edit source]Armstrong was born in Bournemouth, England in 1950.[1][2]
At 17, Armstrong began programming in Fortran on his local council's mainframe.[1]
Armstrong graduated with a B.Sc. in Physics from University College London in 1972.[2]
He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden in 2003.[2][3] His dissertation was titled Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors.[4] He was a professor at KTH from 2014 until his death.[2]
Career
[edit | edit source]After briefly working for Donald Michie at the University of Edinburgh, Armstrong moved to Sweden in 1974 and joined the Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory at Kista in 1984.[2]
Peter Seibel wrote:
Originally a physicist, he switched to computer science when he ran out of money in the middle of his physics PhD and landed a job as a researcher working for Donald Michie — one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence in Britain. At Michie's lab, Armstrong was exposed to the full range of AI goodies, becoming a founding member of the British Robotics Association and writing papers about robotic vision. When funding for AI dried up as a result of the famous Lighthill report, it was back to physics-related programming for more than half a decade, first at the EISCAT scientific association and later the Swedish Space Corporation, before finally joining the Ericsson Computer Science Lab where he invented Erlang.[5]
It was at Ericsson in 1986, that he worked with Robert Virding and Mike Williams, to invent the Erlang programming language,[2] which was released as open source in 1998.[6]
Personal life
[edit | edit source]Armstrong married Helen Taylor in 1977. They had two children, Thomas and Claire.[2]
Death
[edit | edit source]Armstrong died on 20 April 2019 from an infection which was complicated by pulmonary fibrosis.[7][8][9][10]
Publications
[edit | edit source]- 2007. Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World. Pragmatic Bookshelf Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)..
- 2013. Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World. Second edition. Pragmatic Bookshelf Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)..
References
[edit | edit source]- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b c d e f g Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
External links
[edit | edit source]
- Erlang and other stuff - Joe Armstrong's current blog
- Armstrong on Software - Joe Armstrong's old weblog
- Joseph Leslie Armstrong - Prof. Armstrong's home page at KTH
- Joe Armstrong home page at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science
Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 153: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).