The detail about Hoare sitting in the front row at conferences taking notes on specialized topics (after retiring from Oxford, after a Turing Award, after decades of foundational work) is the part of this piece that will stick with me. There's a certain kind of senior figure who stops learning once they reach eminence. Hoare clearly wasn't that. Meyer's phrase "a combination of pride and humility" nails it.

Null references, CSP, Quicksort. One person responsible for that much of how we think about computing is rare. The null reference apology alone earned him a permanent place in the conversation.

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