Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Christopher Clark (programmer)

I am the subject of the page. I did not create this latest incarnation, although I was aware of its creation and pointed the author to some of the relevant references. To my knowledge the main reason this page was re-created because the redirect of my name was to a page that did not my mention my work (and is at best tangentially associated with me, i.e. Yacc++ is not yacc nor a derivative although the grammar notation is intentionally similar) and to counteract that by making note of additional contributions to my field that I had not included in my original page and thus somewhat substantiate my noteworthiness.

That was a challenging task as not being an academic much of my work is unpublished and proprietary, although it has influenced others in my field of parser generator and regular expression processor design. There were approximately 500 commercial sales of Yacc++ despite freely available alternatives and there are still ongoing uses at several of the major companies to which it was sold. However, the exact list is covered by NDA to protect the "commercial advantage" those clients enjoy. I would love to allow the page to cite how it was used in the programming languages of many industrial robots, numerous database language engines, high-speed networking protocols, and the design of a popular jet fighter plane, but the details of those uses and who the clients were are all trade secrets of those clients. Yacc++ has also been used in the academic world with particularly significant uses at Johns-Hopkins, whose publication of a man-page on it has lead some to believe it was developed there.

The closest things to revealing my work are the patents I filed for Intel, the approximately dozen columns I wrote for Sigplan notices (two of which the page cites), the Workshop on "Object-oriented compiler techniques" I hosted at an OOPSLA conference. The numerous postings on comp.compilers I wrote and the discussion that followed them, probably does not meet the normal peer-reviewed standards of academics but in its time was the best way of sharing advances in parsing technique.

Also harder to cite, but not less relevant is how well I am known in my field. This is evidenced partially by references to my work by Terence Parr (PCCTS and ANTLR compiler-compilers author), James Rumbaugh (creator of UML), John Vlissides (Design patterns "gang of four"), and Bruce Eckell (C++ and Java textbook author). While the community of compiler-compiler authors is small, I am known to many of the major compiler-compiler authors Steve Johnson (yacc), Adrian Johnstone (rdp), Josef Gröĩlsch (cocktail), William Donahue (Visual Parse++), Geoffrey Langdale (hyperscan), Ira Baxter (semantic designs), Quinn Tyler Jackson (GramarForge, lua), Paul Mann (lalr), Nakata Sassa (publisher of one of the first algorithms for ELR parsing), Michaela Becchi (high-speed regular expression matching), Thomas Chen (lane tracing LR parsing), David Spector (state splitting LR parsing), and Jim Roskind (yaccable C++ grammar author). I am sure the list includes more, but those are ones who I could remember their contribution to the field. Christopher.f.clark (talk) 16:55, 5 March 2017 (UTC) christopher.f.clark@compiler-resources.com

Clark's contributions

I dare say that Chris Clark's name is quite well enough known in the parsing community. A quick look on Google shows that one of his ACM SIGPLAN Notices contributions is cited academically here by an author in the Saint Petersburg State University Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics:

http://se.math.spbu.ru/SE/diploma/2007/Chemodanov_dip.pdf

(Reference [9] cites Clark.)

Parrt (talk) 18:05, 6 March 2017 (UTC)Quinn Jackson

I'm am opposed to deletion of Clark's wiki page. I understand that an automated algorithm kicked up a fuss (and we need such a beast), but Clark's long history of contributing to computer science, parsing and compiler tools in particular, makes it an obvious entry that should stay on wikipedia. I think he's been at it longer than I have and my (Terence Parr) wiki page lives on. Please do not make it harder for viewers to track Clark's work!

Parrt (talk) 18:05, 6 March 2017 (UTC)Terence Parr