Talk:John Walker (programmer)

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Walker's Hacker's Diet contains an excellent essay on the relationship between engineering and management which I'd like to incorporate somewhere in Wikipedia. It relates to W. Edwards Deming's ideas about quality. Uncle Ed 11:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Presumably "Fourmilab" is a pun on "Fermilab" Gbeauregard (talk) 07:12, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The current version of the page states 'It could also be pronounced "for me lab", i.e. a personal laboratory.' Indeed, it could, but it never occurred to me when I named the site, which is totally a reference to "The Hacker and the Ants" and a pun on "Fermilab". It was later pointed out to me that it could also be taken as a pun on "mi-four" or (generously interpreted) "half-baked" in French; that also eluded me when I named the site. John Walker (fourmilab.ch) (talk) 23:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Damnit John, where's your contact info

Scouring the internet, I can't for the life of me figure out how to email the guy. His chapelle-like ghostliness means that I can't let him know about mistakes he's made in his writing - specifically at http://www.fourmilab.ch/random/ . Fresheneesz (talk) 09:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Each page at Fourmilab now has a button that opens a contact form; you need JavaScript enabled for the button to work. However, John Walker's long-standing advice is to just guess; see the 8th question on the FAQ: http://www.fourmilab.ch/nav/topics/faq.html Clark42 (talk) 12:00, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Clark! Fresheneesz (talk) 21:08, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Hackers' Diet

His authorship of the Hacker's Diet could be included in his bio if there are secondary sources about it. -Reagle (talk) 16:59, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Death

John Walker apparently died today, 2024-02-02.

Expect better sources shortly. John Nagle (talk) 01:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

https://ricochet.com/1539727/john-walker-rip/ is a possible source. RussNelson (talk) 01:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Family has an announcement at Scanalyst: https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/john-walker-1949-2024/4305 Jdougan (talk) 02:56, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Better source in The Register: John Nagle (talk) 07:26, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding a section on 'Political views'

Through reading a few blog posts by Mr. Walker, may he rest in peace, I found a variety of strong political views. The blog has several articles on concepts like western civilisation, democracy, as well as the role of immigrants and islam upon it.

He has particularly strong views on societal progress and liberalism, expounded on in 'Enemies'. He also states that western countries out perform Arab nations in empirical measures (book review of "The strong horse") and states:

"It's tempting to dismiss Arab culture as described here as “dysfunctional”, but (if the analysis be correct), I don't think that's a fair characterisation… I'm not going all multicultural here—there's no question that by almost any objective measure such as per capita income; industrial and agricultural output; literacy and education; treatment of women and minorities; public health and welfare; achievements in science, technology, and the arts; that the West has drastically outperformed Arab nations, which would be entirely insignificant in the world economy absent their geological good fortune to be sitting on top of an ocean of petroleum. But again, that's applying Western metrics to Arab societies."

Namely, he has the view that islam parallels communism ("Clash of Ideologies: Communism, Islam, and the West", his book review on "L'Islam révolutionnaire") and is staunchly anti-west and may even be correlated with less political freedoms ("Islam and Political Freedom").

I also feel as if merging 'The Digital Imprimatur' and 'Evil Empires' into a broader 'Political views' heading would be clearer to read, and allows for this additional information to be added.

I'm unsure about writing and publishing these observations to his wikipedia page, as I'm not extremely familiar with them. There is also the issue that his own opinion may be muddled with summaries of the books he is reviewing, and I cannot email him for clarification. Furthermore, I think it may also fall under 'original research', as I can't seem to find a single document with him explaining his own political views, nor any interviews or resources related to it. Sukkour (talk) 17:49, 10 April 2026 (UTC)