I actually had two PhD advisors [1]; Jim Woodcock and Simon Foster.

Both of them are legitimately wonderful and intelligent humans that I can only use positive adjectives to describe, but the one I was referring to in this was Jim Woodcock [2]. He had many, many nice things to say about Tony Hoare.

[1] Just so I'm not misleading people, I didn't finish my PhD. No fault at all of the advisor or the school.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Woodcock

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paddybyers 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I remember Jim Woodcock as really inspirational - he was working with my PhD supervisor in 1987. We were working on a variant of Z for specifying what, today, we would call CRDTs. I was also lucky enough to meet Tony Hoare the same year and discuss those concepts.

	▲	tombert 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Jim is an amazing guy. One of the rare people who are absolutely brilliant in their respective field, and are equally good at teaching the subject. He's also just a really kind, nice person who is delightful to chat with, though that's true of pretty much anyone in York [1]. I also think his book "Software Engineering Mathematics" [2] is an extremely approachable book for any engineer who wants to learn a bit more theory. As I said, my dropped PhD is not a failure in any capacity from my advisors or the school, mostly just life juggling stuff. [1] I don't know why exactly, but of all the places I've been, York has the highest percentage of "genuinely nice" people. It's one of my favorite spots in the UK as a result. [2] https://a.co/d/02M25LcY, not a referral link.