His pal Owen Wengerd broke the news on behalf of his family saying Walker died on Friday, February 2, 2024.

Walker was born in Maryland, USA to William and Bertha Walker. He leaves behind his wife Roxie Walker and a brother, Bill Walker of West Virginia.

Walker rejected his family's wish for him to be a doctor and went to Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) to chase his dream of astronomy. But he fell in love with computers and never looked back. Heworked at the university's Project Chi (X) computing centre where he learned computer science and got a degree in electrical engineering.

He met Roxie on Thanksgiving Day in 1972, and they tied the knot the next year. Roxie and John drove across the country a few months later for John's new job in California. He soon quit that job and worked at different ones in the bay area. In late 1976, 

Walker made his own circuit board based on the new Texas Instruments TMS9900 microprocessor. This project became Marinchip Systems, and later led to Autodesk. He wrote about the start of Autodesk in The Autodesk File 2.0k.

John Walker helped create AutoCAD, the top computer-aided design (CAD) software by Autodesk, in 1982. AutoCAD and Revit, another 3D design software by Autodesk, are used by architects, engineers, and designers to plan, draw, and model buildings and other structures. Autodesk software has been used for many projects, from the One World Trade Center to Tesla electric cars.

Walker stayed as a coder at Autodesk until 1994, when he quit over clashes with the bosses.