Comment by kfarr
7 days 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.
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 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.
I took his Compilers class about 30 years ago. I really wish I still had those notes.