Comment by kfarr
4 months ago
Shout out to Mr. Dybvig who taught our intro to CS course at IU Bloomington 20+ years ago! It was my first intro to recursion (of course the class was all scheme based) and gave me much more confidence in software development coming from a self taught background.
I had the great pleasure of studying compilers, and then optimizing compilers, with Dybvig at IU in the late 2000s. He was a phenomenal professor; obviously deeply knowledgeable (that's a given), but also uncommonly gifted at imparting that knowledge.
I had the good fortune to be in Dybvig’s compilers class in the mid 2000s. The way it was presented really brought the concepts to life and made it enjoyable.
One of the funniest moments I remember from that class is he suddenly noticed the parens didn't match in the snippet he'd written on the board - so he counted through the trailing ))))) and inserted a close paren at the right place.
I took his Compilers class about 30 years ago. I really wish I still had those notes.