And it was just over ten years ago when Erlang took over the front page of hacker news in a flash prank: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 Unfortunately, I cannot find a screenshot or archived view now (web.archive.org took a capture on March 10th, and not again until the 14th).
Joe Armstrong has died
191–200 of 206 posts
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
It occurs to me that this is one fundamental commonality across great people that includes likes of Einstein to Feynman to Knuth to Erdos. They can sense the curiosity of a person regardless of their background or expertise and cannot prevent themselves from infecting you with the fundamental joy of discovering nature's secrets. Passion is something they feel obligated to spread even if you are just a gardner or a co…
I actually did share that email in a sister thread; I also wrote about it specifically in a blog post [1] if you don't want to traverse through the comments. I completely agree with your thesis. I was a recent college dropout, and Joe's enthusiasm about Erlang, distributed programming, and pretty much everything else about computers was really a good springboard for self-education. [1] https://medium.com/@tombert/rip…
Thanks for sharing that experience. This matches my interactions with him at a couple conferences. Always willing to spend a moment explaining things to anyone. I had the pleasure of drinking beer with him at one of them and he was genuinely excited when I asked to have him sign my erlang book. His Twitter was one of the few I followed. His teachings and musings changed how I view software engineering. He will be missed.
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#193Who is he?
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would anyone be able to suggest a quality photo of Joe to use for his Wikipedia page? I will be spending some time this weekend improving his page.
Joe's twitter gallery has a some nice ones that you might need to adapt for wikipedia (not sure about the license, though): 1. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBs4Q53XkAI6yKd.jpg 2. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAs_wqVXsAEvTor.jpg 3. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ds19NLdXgAAMXho.jpg
Thank you.
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#195Anyone know what he died of/from?
His wife said this morning on Twitter [1]:
>>> This is Helen wife of @joeerl It’s fantastic to read all these comments. Joe died from an infection which his lungs couldn’t cope with due to a quite recent diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis. Incurable and rather unusual. Donate to lung research!
[1] https://twitter.com/mrsjoeerl/status/1119941783381774338
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not crass to honor Joe’s legacy. It’s on topic and relevant.
That's not what you're doing. You're shitposting about Elixir developers--while Joe was enthusiastic about Elixir to the point of being a mod on elixirforum.com. Stop.
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
If you knew Joe, you'd know he was strict about feature-creep in Erlang. He removed Paramaterized Modules, even though it broke some popular Erlang projects -- including the Chicago Boss Web Framework. This was one of the reasons Elixir was created. To make it more "approachable" to people who didn't have the inclination to be FP purists.
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was able to find his reply. The stuff after the `>` is him quoting me. There's another part to this somewhere, but I'll have to keep looking. > Hello! > I am learning Erlang and really liking it. Great > I am finding myself really liking the immutability in regards to being able to reason about my code, but that leaves me with a probably easy question: why does immutability make concurrency easier? Tricky I guess i…
Ah, found the email he responded to a year later. As before, the stuff after the > is him quoting me. ---------------------------------------- > Hello! > > Just under a year ago I send you a message asking you about multi-process computing and the like. You gave me a long, detailed email that not only answered my questions, but also explained in pretty-decent detail. > > I was so impressed by that email that I actual…
Humble and gracious. A model for other language creators and community leaders.
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#198He sounded like a wonderful person in terms of ideas, communication & empathy. I feel sadder than on the day Alan Kay passed. To those with whom I share the morbid curiosity about how it happened, I'd like to mention a movie ending that came to mind. Griever: Tell me how he died. Friend: I will tell you how he lived.
Rumors of my passing have been greatly exaggerated!
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#199He sounded like a wonderful person in terms of ideas, communication & empathy. I feel sadder than on the day Alan Kay passed. To those with whom I share the morbid curiosity about how it happened, I'd like to mention a movie ending that came to mind. Griever: Tell me how he died. Friend: I will tell you how he lived.
Rumors of my passing have been greatly exaggerated!
P.S. Joe and I have had the most wonderful conversations, right up to a few months ago. We'll miss him terribly and remember him vividly!
Re: Joe Armstrong has died
#200I've known about Erlang for at least 20 years, but I never took the time to learn about it.
After reading about it, and more importantly after reading user "tombert"'s interaction with Joe Armstrong, I think I'm beginning to understand the significance of our loss of him.
Godspeed, Joe. You set a high bar for many of us to aim for. Your patience, kindness and desire to help and spread knowledge is truly inspirational.