alt Hacker NewsTell HN: Bob Cringely has died
I heard from a friend of the family that Bob passed away in his sleep early Saturday. Very sad news. Bob, who's real name was Mark Stevens, was an early employee of Apple and was best known for his PBS documentaries, especially "Triumph of the Nerds". He will be missed.
Comments
Bob was a dear friend and co-conspirator on many an adventure. He and I did everything from moonshots to nano manufacturing. I am shocked to see that he is gone. God speed Bob!
Robert X Bishop
Triumph of the Nerds was my introduction to computer history as a kid. I had a dentist that learned I was into computers and he borrowed me his VHS copy. I probably would have had a very different world if I hadn't watched that, because it really turned me on to the potential. Thanks Bob (and my dentist).
I liked his frequently contrarian views. Pre-internet his Cringely column (which he took over from someone else) was a great source of information for those of us living far away from Silicon Valley. RIP.
What a great storyteller. Im surprised Triumph is mostly forgotten today. I remember being disturbed by his accounting of how Microsoft gave birth to DOS.
Very sad news. My VHS box set of "Triumph of the Nerds" resides proudly on my bookshelf.
Dvorak, Om and Robert. Damn. Their takes on tech taught me a lot and shaped how I think about this industry. RIP.
I honestly hadn't heard of him before, and it's sad to be learning about him this way. I'll be watching Triumph of the Nerds tonight. RIP.
I find it sad that he never got rich. Someone so energetic, articulate, and connected with the Who’s Who of Silicon Valley, getting the inside track on everything (especially in his early years), didn’t become fabulously wealthy. There may have been opportunities for him to be an early investor in a meteoric startup, or becoming a co-founder or adviser or board member. But didn’t happen.
His takes on IBM were always interesting, especially during that turbulent time with Ginny. He is missed.
Sad news. Reading his columns post dotcom bubble was always interesting even when I disagreed—which was often!
May his memory be a blessing
This is sad news. I was born in 1989 and thus I don’t remember Cringely’s articles, but I remember watching Triumph of the Nerds in the mid-2000s. I love that documentary; it’s a nice capture of the early days of personal computing and of Silicon Valley culture of the era. I wish there were a follow-up that covered the 2000s and beyond, particularly the rise of social media, the gig economy (Uber, Lyft, AirBNB), cloud computing, big data, cryptocurrency, and generative AI.
Oh man this is really sad to me. End of an Era. His documentaries fueled me so much in the 90s and 2000s. I loved his stuff and his blogs.
Did an amazing job documenting the computer revolution and the internet revolution.
I loved "I, Cringely"
Yeah, "Triumph of the Nerds" was a wonderful adventure. Now, "Triumph of the Lamers" is taking over.
RIP
I remember in the very early days of ZeroTier him stopping by our tiny coworking office in SoCal (we weren't scattered all over yet). He said it piqued his interest because it was "something that should have been built 10 or 15 years ago." (I'm paraphrasing. This was around 2015.)
He belongs to the old Silicon Valley. I wasn't there in those days and have never lived there, but I miss it.
It was back when SV was genuinely creative and largely positive in its attitude toward people and the future. It emerged from the ethos of places like SRI's "augmented human intelligence" lab and things like the Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Club.
Of course I'm well aware of the other origin story, the one that goes back to WWII and the defense industry. They're both true in different ways, but I think the ideas I mentioned above were the ones that came to dominate for a while.
I'd say until the mid-late 2000s.
I have this goofy speculation that the old Silicon Valley more or less went bankrupt in the dot.com crash in 2001. After that it was bought out and taken over by different interests with different goals. Probably bullshit, but it'd make a good novel plot or something.
That's cringe.
His documentary gave me a kind of access to Apple, a company I loved dearly as a kid, even as it was dying. Like WarGames, it seemed impossible to me all of its footage existed. I’m a stranger indebted. RIP.
RIP.
RIP. I loved Triumph of the Nerds as a teenager.
I immigrated to the US to work in Silicon Valley directly because of Triumph of the Nerds that I watched in PBS. I have a life that I could never have achieved in my home country and I am grateful to Bob Cringely for this. May he rest in peace.
:(
Oh no. RIP!!
RIP
.
This is really sad - Triumph of the Nerds played a big part in my move to California from the East Coast at the beginning of my career in the 1990s and I've rewatched the series regularly ever since... RIP Bob.
RIP…
What?
He was only in his early 70’s.
This hits hard. Bob meant a lot to me I exchanged emails with him back in the 1990s and he gave me advice on a software project.
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Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely
Born Mark Stephens
January 28, 1953 (age 73)
Apple Creek, Ohio, U.S.
Died October 3, 2026 (aged 73)
That's sad. I watched the first two parts of Nerds 2.0.1 earlier this year and haven't gotten around to part three. Triumph of the Nerds and Nerds 2.0.1 are a fantastic look at 90's tech. He managed to interview most of the top people.