Eric Engstrom, co-creator of DirectX, has died

https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/07/friends-remember-microsoft-renegade-eric-engstrom-who-suggested-a-directx-console/

by WalterBright • 6 years ago

630 338 6 years ago

I've known Eric since around 1985 or so when he came to work at Data I/O. Our friendship has ebbed and flowed over the years, but he's always been special to me.

I have a little anecdote to share that probably only I remember now, but it has always made me laugh and shows what an unusual thinker he was.

When he was first working at Microsoft around 1991 or 92, he was talking to a manager who had a problem. There was a program written in assembler language, about 50k in size or so. The program had a problem that needed to be fixed. The author no longer worked at Microsoft. The manager had repeatedly assigned various programmers the task of fixing it, and they'd all given up after days of effort.

The trouble was the author had used the macro language that came with the assembler to invent his own quirky, weird, undocumented and thoroughly impenetrable language. None of the programmers could figure it out. He was lamenting that he'd have to assign a programmer to recreating it from scratch, which would take months and cost a lot of money.

Eric says "I can fix it".

In 2 hours, he had it all fixed and checked back into the system.

The manager, astonished, asked: "how did you figure out the author's language?"

Eric: "I didn't. I disassembled the binaries using Walter's disassembler [a disassembler turns binary code back into source assembler code]. The problem was then obvious, I fixed it and checked the new source code back in!"

Eric then laughed uproariously, and so did I. Nobody but Eric would have thought of that shortcut to solve the problem. If he couldn't break through the wall, he'd go over it, under it, or around it. He was always like that.

I'll miss him a lot.

idclip3• 6 years ago

An an absolute monster!

Edit: non native speaker. I meant to say „what an absolute unit!“ to praise his skill. Be gentle to the ignorant please.

post_below• 6 years ago

In the spirit of gentleness, at HN comments which don't add substance to the conversation are discouraged. So in this case it's not just word choice that people are reacting to.

endgame• 6 years ago

I can imagine calling someone a monster in an approving tone, but it's harder to convey accurately in text.

etaioinshrdlu• 6 years ago

Can you tell us what this giant asm macro program was?

WalterBright10• 6 years ago

I don't think Eric told me, and if he did, I forgot. In those days asm was often used for efficiency, as compilers weren't that good compared to hand-coded asm. He knew I'd purposely written the disassembler to produce MASM source code, and thought I'd enjoy hearing about the use he put it to (and I did!).

BTW, this anecdote is one of the reasons that I've strongly resisted adding macros to D.

monocasa4• 6 years ago

FWIW, most large asm programs from back in the day relied heavily on macros just to have some semblance of abstraction.

dllthomas3• 6 years ago

This approach generalizes. When faced with a problem, consider the projections you have available and work in the most suitable.

ma2rten• 6 years ago

What do you mean by projections? Do you have another example?

munificent2• 6 years ago

As Alan Kay said, "A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points."

bch• 6 years ago

Gordian Knot[0] recognition in action.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot

WalterBright10• 6 years ago

Another example of how Eric was not constrained by conventional thinking. While at Microsoft in the 90's, he'd occasionally interview job candidates. He'd hand them his phone, and ask them "if it was your job to make a better phone, what would you do?"

The bulk would answer "Um, better sound quality? Maybe an address book?"

Eric just couldn't believe those responses. (Remember, this was in the 90's when a phone was just a phone.) He was always boiling over with ideas.

doublerabbit• 6 years ago

"if it was your job to make a better phone, what would you do?"

Turn it in to a cube maybe an octagon. I'm sick of rectangles.

WalterBright10• 6 years ago

My idea at the time was to add a morse code key (a rocker switch, one side was dit the other dah) so you could send messages privately while in a meeting.

Another idea is to make a walkie-talkie mode, where you could communicate with nearby cell phones without needing a cell tower.

recursive• 6 years ago

"Um, better sound quality?"
Eric just couldn't believe those responses.

If only a phone could be invented that had sound quality as good as we had in the 90s. I can barely understand people anymore. I'm not losing my hearing in my old age. (much) In person is fine. Other recordings are fine. Even video conferences are fine. But phone calls sound unaccountably terrible.

DonHopkins• 6 years ago

Build-in Automatic Teller Machine: a phone that dispenses money!

quickthrower2• 6 years ago

Are we celebrating irrelevant interview questions?

blinkeer• 6 years ago

Thank you for this story. Your remeberance of him is inspiring. Moments like these are what we live for.

Using your tool, hah!

ciriarte• 6 years ago

That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing. It reminds of a similar experience I had.

A few years back one of the systems I ended up inheriting stopped working on January 1st. As most people, I had taken the day off, but my manager called me to fix the issue in prod.

After much researching, I found out the assembly causing the issue. Similarly, the original dev had left and the source code was lost. So I used ildasm and found out the year was hardcoded. I patched the binary and went home.

Rest in Peace, Eric.

tonyedgecombe2• 6 years ago

Similarly, the original dev had left and the source code was lost.

This seems surprisingly common, I hear it a lot from my customers.

MaXtreeM• 6 years ago

So I used ildasm and found out the year was hardcoded.

Deliberate time bomb or honest mistake?

aparsons• 6 years ago

I was at Microsoft around the time of Eric’s departure (I left a few months before him).

Ironically, the two men arguably most responsible for the success of the Xbox were strongly opposed to the entire “Manhattan” project at the time.

Eric was instrumental in the DirectX runtime design that Microsoft ended up porting to the original Xbox hardware with shared high level components.

The other guy was Dave Cutler, who led the NT and hypervisor groups at the time. Xbox v1 borrowed heavily from Dave’s work on modular, stable-userspace NT. 360 was basically running a full-fledged NT iirc. Dave, like Eric, hated the Xbox project early on.

In today’s terms, it would be like Facebook deciding to make a search engine or mobile OS, so their reactions were hardly surprising. Word was that even BillG was hesitant, but Ballmer really wanted more product lines.

Eric will be dearly missed.

skrebbel• 6 years ago

What's 'the entire "Manhattan" project'? I mean, other than the nuke on Hiroshima which I suppose you don't mean?

Remember that there's HN'ers who never worked at Microsoft :-)

zerr2• 6 years ago

Interesting! I wonder, back in those days, when your day to day job involves coding in Assembly, I guess reaching to a disassembler on a regular basis also should've been a norm, no?

WalterBright10• 6 years ago

Not really. But I can tell you that, as a compiler writer, reaching for the disassembler is what you do a lot of!

imdsm• 6 years ago

Walter's disassembler
WalterBright

Was it your disassembler?

WalterBright10• 6 years ago

Yup. https://digitalmars.com/ctg/obj2asm.html

blinkingled6• 6 years ago

He died at a hospital in Seattle. His wife, Cindy Engstrom, said he had injured one of his feet in October, accidentally took too much Tylenol for pain relief and suffered liver damage.

As sad as it is to lose a person at age 55, it's even harder to digest the tylenol induced liver failure part until you experience foot injury/pain. I spent last December in excruciating foot pain that came out of nowhere and the thought of wanting to guzzle down entire bottle of Advil/Tylenol touched my mind at least couple times.

Anyway, RIP. Old interview with him - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjZWUweIIEU

I_Suleiman• 6 years ago

Why would some think excessive Tylenol would be preferable over narcotic pain meds How much Tylenol would a person have to consume over a two month period to permanently damage their liver This is bizarre.

19962• 6 years ago

Just consuming more than 4g on one day may be enough to start the liver failure, especially if using alcohol or other drugs.

Protip: have some N acetyl cysteine handy. It's freely available on amazon, and it protects your liver from acetaminophen abuse (and helps rebound faster the next day after a night of heavy drinking, but the FDA absolutely hates when people mention that :-)

EDIT: replying here as HN things I'm "posting too fast"

Whenever in doubt, by default, you take it due to its extremely good tolerance.

There are no bad side effects at usual doses, even after 50+ years on the market (well, at very large doses, vomiting, which I think is good in case of acetaminophen or alcohol poisoning)

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

Don't let the FDA make it illegal:

https://www.sgtreport.com/2020/08/use-n-acetylcysteine-the-f...

https://fda.news/2020-08-21-fda-trying-make-n-acetylcysteine...

AdamN2• 6 years ago

Many stronger drugs have acetaminophen in them. I've tried oxycontin and had very little benefit. People should know for themselves what works for their pain but never underestimate the damage drugs can do, even if they're over the counter.

agytvfr2• 6 years ago

How much Tylenol would a person have to consume over a two month period to permanently damage their liver

Liver damage can occur after a single incident. People have died from single time overdoses of paracetamol. There is a quick fix in an ER of giving NAC which can help eliminate most of the damage, but there is a small window(a day or two) where it is effective.

monocasa4• 6 years ago

I've seen probably a dozen people in my high school class die from their narcotic pain meds originally prescribed to them. I only took a quarter of what was prescribed after surgery from shattering my leg, and yet weening off was worse than the pain from the injury.

I don't blame him for the choices he made, having been there.

blinkingled6• 6 years ago

In my case I went to the doctor only after trying to bear it for as long as I can - they did an x-ray and said there's nothing wrong with your foot and you'll just have to ride it for some days. Heck the doctor asked me to eat Turmeric pills - not even kidding. He made sure I wasn't getting a narcotic - and I wasn't looking for it because I am really afraid of side effects. (My wife is the same way - brave woman went without touching the narcotic meds after tooth removal.)

That pretty much leaves you with OTC pain meds - I know in these cases probably narcotics of the right kind in restricted doses sound much better but I am just truly afraid of side effects because of what we saw earlier in life.

quicklyfrozen• 6 years ago

I know someone who ended up hospitalized from accidentally taking two over-the-counter meds that both contained Tylenol. It just doesn't take that much to cause damage.

renewiltord3• 6 years ago

Honestly, this one does surprise me. American doctors give out opioids like nobody's business. They give you narcotic painkillers for post-tooth-extraction pain! That's ridiculous! The problem, I think, is that many people are foolish enough to "return their unused prescription". I never do that. I make sure to retain unused drugs to their true expiry.

It must have been really quite painful. Still, I'd strongly recommend keeping drugs of all manner handy if you've got good self-control around them. They have high utility.

IfOnlyYouKnew2• 6 years ago

It's quite common. At least in Europe, available sizes of Paracetamol were severely limited not too long ago because it was the leading cause of overdose deaths.

Individual risk isn't exactly high, but OTC painkillers are ubiquitous.

Both accidents and suicide attempts are/were frequent. It's a rather terrible way to die, IIRC, with excruciating pain and entirely too much time to regret the decision/accident.

jartelt2• 6 years ago

Tylenol is surprisingly easy to overdose on and is well known to cause liver damage. This is especially true if you take extra strength tylenol. It is recommended to stay below 3,000 mg of tylenol within 24 hours, which is only 6 extra strength pills. If you take a bit extra and get over 4,000 mg per day for multiple days, you can get major issues. There just is not much margin for error with tylenol.

I think people often get confused because you can typically take a bunch of ibuprofen pills for pain and there are rarely serious side effects. But ibuprofen and tylenol are much different in this regard, despite the fact that both relieve pain and both can be easily bought in a drug store.

dragontamer3• 6 years ago

Tylenol is over-the-counter, while you need a doctor to prescribe narcotics.

As such, Tylenol overdose is more common. The labels are very clear about how much to take, but when you're in chronic pain, you may not be thinking much about the warning stickers or labels.

19962• 6 years ago

The lack of easy access to strong painkillers kills people, driven to extreme by the madness of pain.

Yet we only talk about the evil of drugs, and the opioids epidemic.

andromeduck2• 6 years ago

What is the opioid epidemic?

AdamN2• 6 years ago

Tylenol is really not to be abused. Much better to go heavy with Ibuprofen and remember the old-time drugs like aspirin as well as new ones like naproxen.

But really a doctor/nurse is critical if the pain is going on for more than a day or two.

shock• 6 years ago

Much better to go heavy with Ibuprofen

Do you know that Ibuprofen can cause morphological changes in the testes? I wouldn't call that much better...

cogman102• 6 years ago

Alternating drugs can be pretty effective. Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Tylenol.

The two don't interact with each other which helps to keep the pain (or fever) relief going strong without ODing on either.

But yeah, be careful either way.

OJFord3• 6 years ago

And there was me thinking 'Tylenol' was ibuprofen.

I think it's so weird (different English speaking) countries having different names for drugs, you'd think it would be something worth standardising. Well, acetaminophen is the standard/medico name I believe (paracetamol to Britons), but why don't we just all use that? Weird.

While I'm at it, Advil = ibuprofen. The latter being both the common UK and 'standard' name I think.

smabie• 6 years ago

Doubtful. He was probably addicted to vicodin or some other opiate that is mixed with tylenol

neogodless2• 6 years ago

Off topic:

Did you identify the problem? Was it gout?

It seems awfully silly for a random internet stranger to diagnose your issue from "excruciating foot pain that came out of nowhere" but...

I had basically that off and on again for seven years before it was correctly diagnosed and treated. (As a healthy, active, relatively young person, gout wasn't suspected, but eventually an MRI gave a clue, and blood tests confirmed it.)

blinkingled6• 6 years ago

I got an X-Ray and it showed nothing. The doctor basically thought I was there to score narcotics but he wasn't going to get me any (I wasn't looking for them either but was told to eat Turmeric pills believe it or not - I did and don't have any way to know if it helped.)

Does gout come and go - I have not had trouble since then. If it returns I will be sure to do a blood test - and I really appreciate you asking. I am always for problem solving with or without strangers help :)

01100011• 6 years ago

As someone in their mid-40s I can attest that random pains seemingly caused by nothing are part of the journey of life.

A few days ago I got out of bed and couldn't straighten my leg without insane knee pain. It lasted about a day and now it's absolutely fine. Yesterday I was vacuuming and my ankle just starts hurting like crazy. Fine in about 15 minutes. The other day I was bending over the sink washing dishes and my left shoulder blade gave me 7/10 pain. Seemed to be caused by an aggravated neck extensor but IDK.

Getting old sucks but I suppose it beats the alternative.

cityzen2• 6 years ago

Fellow gout person here. I was finally prescribed allopurinol but I am not sure I want to take it long term due to the chance that it could cause liver and kidney damage but I need to do more research.

Fortunately gout can be controlled fairly well with diet but in the midst of a flare up, it is excruciating.

jychang• 6 years ago

Holy shit. That's insane. People don't realize how terrible it is to die from tylenol induced liver damage. That's often considered one of the worst ways to commit suicide. You're in an incredible amount of pain for a long time.

dctoedt• 6 years ago

That's often considered one of the worst ways to commit suicide.

I came close to seeing that first-hand some years ago: My (widowed) dad suffered a long, agonizing death from a form of leukemia. I was with him, at his house, for his final week, with a hospice nurse checking in periodically. He refused morphine and instead took a fair amount of acetaminophen; for calories, he drank a lot of beer and V-8 juice mixed together. I warned him about the danger of mixing alcohol and acetaminophen; he immediately perked up, thinking that would be a way for him to end things. He was disappointed when I explained that it wouldn't be a quick death: he'd just wreck his liver and be in even more agony. (He died a few hours later.)

rodgerd2• 6 years ago

I only learned about it because a local soap opera[1] made it a plot point in the early/mid 90s.

[1] Shortland Street

fctorial4• 6 years ago

You're in an incredible amount of pain for a long time.

Just take some tylenol.

Wowfunhappy6• 6 years ago

Both of my parents are physicians, and both have worked in emergency rooms at some point in their careers. One thing they've taught me is to be cautious about taking too much Tylenol.

At the right dose, Tylenol may well be the safest pain medication we have, even compared to Advil, which can occasionally cause problems if taken regularly over a lifetime. However, the gap between a useful dose of Tylenol, and the amount of Tylenol which will kill you, is relatively small compared to similar medicines.

My parents say they've watched a lot of people die in the hospital from Tylenol overdoses. There is an antidote, but only if you get it in time.

wincy• 6 years ago

Wow, we recently had a scare with our five year old passed out in her room with a bottle full of Tylenol strewn about. Getting an artery stick on a five year old is one of the most awful things I’ve had to endure, but I wasn’t going to trust a five year old on whether she had taken the pills or not. Turned out she hadn’t taken any! But it was super scary, Tylenol poisoning is no joke, and we have lock boxes for all our medications now.

nodesocket• 6 years ago

So, then should Advil (ibuprofen) always be taken instead? When is it appropriate to take Tylenol over Advil?

blinkingled6• 6 years ago

There were also the Tyelnol murders that are I think still unsolved? Did not seem to have stopped people from using it which is a surprise really.

sn_master7• 6 years ago

As someone taking a lot of Tylenol after a car accident a week ago, thanks for the advice!

I'll switch to Ibuprofen now. They didn't give me any prescription meds because there were no broken bones, but my chest and left shoulder are in so much pain, specially when I wakeup. Airbags were deployed, and I went from 84 mph to zero when the crash happened (dashcam had the speed on it).

ttcbj• 6 years ago

Yes, exactly, the dangerous dose is not far past the safe dose.

One of the common causes is that many medicines contain Tylenol/acetaminophen, but don't have it in the name [1]. For example, DayQuil or Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold and Sinus.

People take something like that, then they layer Tylenol on top of it thinking that is the first Tylenol they are taking, and it pushes them into the danger zone.

[1] https://www.healthgrades.com/right-care/chronic-pain/5-medic...

rafaelero• 6 years ago

Interesting. When I was a kid, I enjoyed the taste of Tylenol a lot. One night, I elaborated a very bold plan to get the medicine and drink it without my parents seeing. Fortunately, I was caught. Your comment made me realize how lucky I was.

giantg2• 6 years ago

I think this sort of issue is more common than non-medical people realize. It amazes me how often in movies and real life you see people wake up after a night of heavy drinking (sometimes still drunk) and take tylenol or other NSAIDs with liver/drinking warning labels. Or guzzling more NyQuil than they should (contains acetaminophen). The movie industry has cracked down on showing smoking, yet they still show people doing things that could cause liver damage in a unintuitive way.

dboreham• 6 years ago

This seems to be a country-specific lack of awareness. In the UK it's hard to buy large quantities of Acetaminophen/Paracetamol and pretty much everyone is aware that it's dangerous in quantity.

tyingq• 6 years ago

I wish they would ban the codeine boosted Tylenol for this reason. People will take more than prescribed at once because the codeine really knocks the edge off, but they forget about the overdose of Tylenol. If they need codeine, just prescribe that and let patients supplement with reasonable doses of NSAIDS.

pezo1919• 6 years ago

NAC is antidote. Not sure about the oral, but IV is for sure.

ericd• 6 years ago

My relative who worked in a pediatric ER goes so far as to not allow Acetaminophen in the house.

secondcoming2• 6 years ago

It also killed Rory Gallagher, a famous guitarist

heydonovan• 6 years ago

This is scary to read, as I've been there. All my friends know not to give me Tylenol. I think on two occasions now I had slight pain and took maybe two or three extra strength Tylenol, and was found on the floor shivering, sweating, waiting for death. This wasn't even an OD, this was recommended dosage. I don't think I'll ever take Tylenol again, I'll deal with the pain. This felt like my kidneys were on fire and not so much liver, so what do I know.

toast02• 6 years ago

Based on having that reaction, I wouldn't suggest you take Tylenol again.

For others, the recommended dose of extra strength Tylenol is two 500mg tablets; but if you only have a minor pain, you don't need to take two tablets, or you could take regular strength (325mg), again the recommendation is two tablets, but you can take less. More than 1g in one dose, or 3g over a day is extremely inadvisable. Acetaminophen (paracetamol) is toxic at a small multiple of the recommended dose; prescription strength acetominophen products add other active ingredients, they don't add more acetaminophen; as opposed to ibuprofen where prescription strength is just more ibuprofen. I'm not a doctor, this isn't medical advice, etc.

dragontamer3• 6 years ago

One of my classmates died of Tylenol overdose when I was younger, so this lesson was imparted upon me rather quickly. She wasn't that close to me personally, but still, its a lesson I won't forget.

In that case, she got into a car accident and started taking Tylenol for some chronic pain related to the accident. A few months later, she was dead.

sn_master7• 6 years ago

I...was in a car accident last Tuesday and been taking Tylenol like crazy. They refused to give me any prescriptions because I didn't have broken bones, despite the impact going 84 mph to zero in subsecond.

Thank you!

Do you know what's a good alternative to Tylenol? My chest and shoulder are hurting like hell.

Aaronstotle• 6 years ago

I heard that if Tylenol was released today as a new drug, the FDA would not approve it, which is kind of scary to think that it's on shelves now.

sn_master7• 6 years ago

What's the alternative? Ibuprofen? Aspirin?

ce43• 6 years ago

Hmm, acetaminophen/paracetamol is listed here next to aspirin, ibuprofen and opioids are also listed there. I don't think it would not be approved at all, maybe not for over the counter sale. Here in Germany you get it only in pharmacies. No prescription is needed for buying up to 10g of active substance per visit.

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

trollied• 6 years ago

It’s called Paracetamol in the UK. We can only buy small packs of it (16 tablets or so) to try and prevent things like this. It’s very very rare to see Paracetamol issues in the UK news.

A great man, a crying shame.

bigtones2• 6 years ago

Yes, that is one of the things I was amazed with when I moved from Australia to the USA. You can buy Acetaminophen over here in America in jumbo size 500 or even 1000 tablet containers over the counter - that's a lot of a pretty powerful drug.

tonyedgecombe2• 6 years ago

Most shops limit you to two packs at a time as well.

winter_blue• 6 years ago

Reading this whole thread, it almost seems like an opioid or an opioid combined with naloxone (suboxone?) would be rather safer than tylenol/acetaminophen. At least with opioids, the risk of overdose is far more widely understood, and a remedy to overdoses (naloxone) exists, in case it happens. There is the downside of its addictiveness, but in particularly severe cases of patients suffering from really bad pain, it sounds like controlled, limited doses of opioid-based pain killers might be safer? I'm not a doctor, I'm just wondering.

bigtones2• 6 years ago

Tylenol is deadly, the difference in the dosing between Children's Tylenol and Infants Tylenol has also unfortunately killed many babies - Acetaminophen is a very powerful drug. The FDA failed to fix it for more than 15 years during which many children died of Tylenol overdoses.

https://www.propublica.org/article/tylenol-mcneil-fda-kids-d...

parasubvert• 6 years ago

It’s bizarre that in the USA they didn’t label infant Tylenol dosage. It’s labelled in other countries. We used infant Tylenol whenever our baby had a fever or otherwise was fighting off a cold. The dose size for children’s Tylenol goes way up (5ml). You'd think something was up when the syringes they give you for the infant type are max 2 ml.

legohead• 6 years ago

I smashed my middle toe into a table while play-chasing my dog around the house. I was instantly in enormous pain, but able to hobble around.

Later that night, I was in so much pain that I literally could not walk at all. I was laughing and crying at the same time, it was ridiculous that I was in so much pain over a TOE. Not even the big toe at that. I had to crawl to the bathroom to pee. Luckily it just took another day and I could hobble on it again.

carabiner• 6 years ago

I heard somewhere that under 40 (or was it 45?), most people die of suicide or trauma. After that, people can die of pretty much anything. Just goes to show...

liotier• 6 years ago

accidentally took too much Tylenol for pain relief and suffered liver damage

For non-USians, Tylenol is a brand of paracetamol. The recommended maximum daily dose for an adult is three to four grams. Paracetamol toxicity is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world.

fctorial4• 6 years ago

Also known as crocin.

jlarocco• 6 years ago

I'm not sure if it's true, but I recall reading that Tylenol is the most commonly overdosed and misused drug. Combined with alcohol it'll destroy your liver, even in low dosages.

cityzen2• 6 years ago

I have gout and when it flares up it is the worst. I am in serious foot pain for anywhere from a week to a month or longer. Currently I'm dealing with a buildup of gouty tophi on my heel that has been there for a few years and finally surfacing and causing real issues. I thought it was just a callous from walking with flip flops for too long or something, but nope, just more gout coming around to ruin my days.

It is very depressing that, on top of the pain, I feel like I'm constantly making excuses why I can't do things with my family. Often times I will "power through it" and just make things worse.

Nowadays I am quick to get on my crutches and keep my foot elevated at any hint of a flare up.

I did not know of Eric but can certainly understand taking too much Tylenol for foot pain.

Karupan• 6 years ago

As someone who takes paracetamol instead of NSAIDs (ibuprofen, aspirin) because of increased sensitivity, this scares me. I do have a hard cut-off of three 500mg tablets in 24 hours, and I never take more than 500mg in a 6 hour period.

I should ask my doctor for a non-NSAID alternative painkiller.

mensetmanusman• 6 years ago

Tylenol overdose is too common. I doubt the medicine would be legal today if someone tried to release it now.

tw04• 6 years ago

Ugh, it is shocking how many people don't seem to realize what acetaminophen does to the liver. I had buddies who used to pound tylenol after a long night of drinking to try to help a hangover in college. I'm actually kind of shocked this didn't happen to any of them.

PSA: don't drink and take tylenol, please. The warnings on the bottle aren't a joke.

thorin2• 6 years ago

I find it highly confusing how Americans seem to always reference branded medication. In the UK people generally take generic Ibuprofen (an NSAI) or Paracetamol at a standard does e.g. 500mg for paracetamol. Over time this seems way less confusing. There are quite a few branded versions but once you have an idea of the component parts it seems far less confusing to understand what you are taking.

The BNF provides some accessible guides to all pharmaceutical drugs:

https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/ibuprofen.html

https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/paracetamol.html

I don't mean to be insensitive RIP to what sounds like an awesome guy

physicsguy• 6 years ago

I don't think it's that uncommon, plenty of people would say 'Nurofen' in the UK as well.

Tade0• 6 years ago

I share this sentiment. Not knowing that "Tylenol" is Paracetamol I assumed it had to be some heavy, special, US-only painkiller, like those opioids which killed so many.

I have a box of this in my drawer - it's 20 pills totalling 10g - that's enough to damage a healthy liver if taken in the span of 24h.

I can't imagine the pain this man must have been going through to do this and mind you, I had kidney stones.

mellosouls• 6 years ago

Non-paywalled obit (heavy on ads unfortunately, quite a bit of detail though):

https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/07/friends-remember-microsof...

Engstrom was happiest working in his lab. His death came from medical complications related to an accident in the lab, after he dropped a monitor on his foot.

His friend, St. John, managed to get permission to visit Engstrom and deliver some blood collection kit vials to him so he could extract his blood and DNA for cryogenic cold storage.

“We’re going to get a full genetic sequence of Eric’s DNA,” St. John said. “Eric’s going to live on forever.”

St. John played Viking music at the end of the service.

astrange7• 6 years ago

They could've just taken some of his hair…

dang• 6 years ago

We've changed the URL from https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-misfit-helped-lead-co... to that, since it's not only unpaywalled but also seems to have more detail. Thanks!

ddevault• 6 years ago

Note, this is not Eric Engeström, who works on Mesa and OpenGL - I was confused at first.

Sympathies to the family. 55 is far too young.

snazz• 6 years ago

That's awfully confusing! What a coincidence that two graphics stack developers have such similar names.

scott31• 6 years ago

Did he also take part on Microsoft's attempts to prevent open graphics standards?

29athrowaway• 6 years ago

While I also hate that happened, it is not clear he had to do with it and it is not the moment to bring this up.

The parent refers to is:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-an...

See FUD part.

chmod775• 6 years ago

You think someone's obituary is maybe not the place to discuss something like that?

birdsbirdsbirds• 6 years ago

Why not? It's the only moment in time when people are interested in the life achievement of a person. There will never be enough interest for a second discussion that balances his achievements with the negative consequences.

As a society, where else could you show that people shouldn't ignore negative consequences when they seek their success?

pjmlp• 6 years ago

Since he contributed to XBox, and each game console since Atari days has used its own API, he couldn't have help to prevent something that never existed in first place.

And as everyone is saying, there are better things to remember and look on a person's life work that is sadly no longer among us.

zokula• 6 years ago

I know right? directX is abomination.

United857• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/pKtWT

atlgator• 6 years ago

This is really sad but I can totally see how it happens. Check out this label for Amazon brand Acetamenophen. Under directions, the first line says "Take 2 caplets every 6 hours while symptoms last." If you only read that line you would take 8 caplets, or 4000 mg, per day. Unfortunately, the next line says "Do not exceed 6 caplets in 24 hours" making the max OTC dosage 3000 mg per day. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71bQIsLJPrL...

SoSoRoCoCo• 6 years ago

the next line says "Do not exceed 6 caplets in 24 hours"

Jeez, is that a pill bottle, or the Headpiece of Ra from "Raiders of the Lost Ark"...

enos_feedler• 6 years ago

Sad to hear. My first programming memories were getting the DirectDraw 2D Sprite demo running by copying C++ tutorial code from the documentation. I didn't understand Windows COM then and I still don't understand it today :P

alternatetwo• 6 years ago

Nobody understands COM, least of all the people who invented it, if you look at functions like CoUninitialize ...

VRay• 6 years ago

I read a lot of cool stuff about this guy in the book "Opening the Xbox" by Dean Takahashi[1] and on Alex St. John's blog (which is unfortunately offline now)

He sounded like every bit as great a programmer as John Carmack or any of the relatively famous linux maintainers

[1] https://archive.org/details/openingxboxinsid00taka/

1970-01-012• 6 years ago

DirectX was literally a game changer. PC Mag's 1995 article about DirectX:

https://books.google.com/books?id=FTbctntiaHgC&lpg=RA3-PA320...

andromeduck2• 6 years ago

More historical context:

http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/windoze/OpenGLvsDirect3D.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_(graphics_API)#Hi...

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6054...

There was another blog with a detailed rundown on the politics behind the Fahrenheit drama but the site wend down 10 years ago and I can't remember what the link was.

1970-01-012• 6 years ago

I almost forgot about that whole mess. OpenGL was always a faster and better choice to run, but D3D and MS knew this and beat it out of PCs with the pure business force that made MS the company that it was.

Todd• 6 years ago

I had the privilege of working for Eric at one of his startups. He had an outsized personality. He was the most gregarious person I've known. He could be very intimidating until you got to know him. He was also positive and generous, and his enthusiasm was contagious. We will miss him.

williamsharris• 6 years ago

His created DirectX really helped me to enjoy games in my childhood. Thank you for your contribution.

himujjal• 6 years ago

DirectX shaped a lot of our childhood for us millenials.

Thanks to Eric and team.

RIP Eric.

TruthHurts44• 6 years ago

Sad and early death of a great mind :(

codecamper2• 6 years ago

Umm. He was 55.

Tech people... why are we so lame at living a long life??

codecamper2• 6 years ago

"... His death came from medical complications related to an accident in the lab, after he dropped a monitor on his foot."

That's tragic, but come on... if you were in decent health a frigging monitor on your foot isn't going to kill you.

In my short 47 years I've known a professor of CS to die at 52 while running. I've known a computer friend to die at 32 from colon cancer. Steve Jobs at 52 from pancreatic cancer.

The computer world is not that big, so there should not be so many of these outcomes.

Programmers seriously need to focus a bit on health. I've been studying how not to die for the past year, since my own father allowed his prostate cancer to go from lamb to lion. Maybe I'll write an ebook & call it "how not to die".

incognito_limey• 6 years ago

What a beautiful soul.

We should all be so lucky to be remembered this way.

I didn't know the man, but very grateful for DirectX and all the amazing experiences it's allowed myself and others to have. For many of us, games are an escape from things that are not so pleasant. As a kid/young man, they definitely got me through some tough times.

I can still remember playing Pitfall on Windows 95 like it was yesterday, due to DirectX.

Thanks Mr. Engstrom, for being one of the crazy ones.

WalterBright10• 6 years ago

Eric left behind an unusually large wake of friends and people who loved him. I'm a little surprised how much it hurts to lose him.

arooaroo• 6 years ago

I recall (albeit vaguely) reading an interesting book "Renegades of the Empire: How Three Software Warriors Started a Revolution Behind the Walls of Fortress" by Michael Drummond.

My recollection of the genesis of DirectX was in fact a skunkworks project create their vision of the next generation web-browsing experience. I think it was demoed and they had begun touting to developers/publishers with work with, but was axed.

I think it had a 3D aspect to it -- perhaps all 3d, I can't recall. But my memory was that they needed a significant 3D library, and they didn't want to go down the OpenGL (I think it was fundamentally political and personality disagreements with themselves and the maintainer(s) of the OpenGL implementation within MS) They convinced their boss to acquire a company that had a 3d engine product and hacked together a more comprehensive library, that ultimately became DirectX.

robertlagrant• 6 years ago

riends said that Engstrom didn’t have any organization, process, or discipline as a manager. He would promise products and schedules, without checking with his team first. He would simply inspire them to hit the targets, and that was his view of leadership through the “haze of barely controlled chaos.” He didn’t write things down. He was not the most “warm and fuzzy guy unless you were truly in his circle.”

Nightmare :)

sman912822• 6 years ago

I knew Eric. We worked together on his work with 3x3 and our last conversation in September was an hour talking about drones.

He was abrasive to most, but if you clicked, you clicked. We clicked.

RIP Big guy.

Eric Engstrom, co-creator of DirectX, has died

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