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Joe Armstrong has died

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41–50 of 206 posts

Re: Joe Armstrong has died

#43
post #38

Very sad news. Thank you to HN mods for commemorating Joe's passing with the black bar. His contribution to our world is immeasurable. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, by all accounts he was much loved. Joe you will be missed.

For those of us who haven't seen it before, would you please explain what this means? I assume it is some sort of sign of mourning?

It is exactly what you guessed.

Re: Joe Armstrong has died

#45
post #38

Very sad news. Thank you to HN mods for commemorating Joe's passing with the black bar. His contribution to our world is immeasurable. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, by all accounts he was much loved. Joe you will be missed.

For those of us who haven't seen it before, would you please explain what this means? I assume it is some sort of sign of mourning?

It’s done any time someone “with significance to the community” dies. I’m not sure when it started but it’s been a thing for many years.

Feels extremely appropriate to me, and honestly, it was the first thing I looked for after I saw a tweet about this. RIP, Joe :(

Re: Joe Armstrong has died

#46
post #5

This is indeed sad news (I feel he deserves the black bar of mourning once confirmed). Although Elixir gets the most attention these days the solid engineering of BEAM is the foundation that Elixir is built on.

Candy-coated Elixir, which tries to hide concepts that are difficult for people who approach programming without the requisite mathematical skills, may be getting most of the attention, but serious mission-critical "nine-nines" projects are still being done in Erlang. I program in Erlang every day for a system that can't (and doesn't) have any downtime.

Re: Joe Armstrong has died

#49
post #43
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who haven't seen it before, would you please explain what this means? I assume it is some sort of sign of mourning?

It is exactly what you guessed.

I like the black bar, it shows both mourning and respect.

Occasionally I'll see the black bar and the notice and not even know who the person was - at which point I get to find out about someone amazing I didn't know existed and to appreciate their contribution.

Obviously I'd prefer that there not need to be a black bar though.

Re: Joe Armstrong has died

#50
post #5

This is indeed sad news (I feel he deserves the black bar of mourning once confirmed). Although Elixir gets the most attention these days the solid engineering of BEAM is the foundation that Elixir is built on.

Candy-coated Elixir, which tries to hide concepts that are difficult for people who approach programming without the requisite mathematical skills, may be getting most of the attention, but serious mission-critical "nine-nines" projects are still being done in Erlang. I program in Erlang every day for a system that can't (and doesn't) have any downtime.

Please don't do this sort of thing. It's crass and it's wrong besides.
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