Remembering Bob Lee • Hacker News Board

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#51

Post by scythe » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #2

What a tragedy. I remember Bob’s code that generates certain numbers: https://www.beust.com/weblog/coding-challenge/ . Bob’s code is in Java, yet uses clever backtracking techniques to achieve the best performance among many solutions in all kinds of languanges.

I was curious about this, but it looks like the links to crazybob.org now 404.

It seems to me like the trick would be to find a way to generate, in order, the numbers you can't print, then you just print the gaps between them.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#52

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

My understanding is that Bob was a single parent. If you come across any information about a GoFundMe for Bob’s child or similar during your research for this obituary, would you mind reporting back? Email in profile if you’d prefer not to comment with that info. Thank you.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#53

Post by sine_break » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

He leaves behind a legacy of innovation and passion that will continue to inspire us all. Bob, we will never forget you and the impact you made on our lives. Rest in peace.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#54

Post by bootsygw » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 5:59 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #2

What a tragedy. I remember Bob’s code that generates certain numbers: https://www.beust.com/weblog/coding-challenge/ . Bob’s code is in Java, yet uses clever backtracking techniques to achieve the best performance among many solutions in all kinds of languanges.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080912181335/crazybob.org/Beus...

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#55

Post by swframe2 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

I saw the news earlier and only just realized we worked together. He was an amazing person.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#56

Post by tomandrews88 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

hobr wrote: post #48

Scubabear68 wrote: post #31

I remember fondly interacting with him quite a bit 20 years ago early (?) in his "crazy bob" phase on theserverside.com, and the epic flamewars around Java backend frameworks and app servers. Quite a shock to hear of his death.

I met him around the same time and we did the conference circuit together for a fair few years. I vividly remember being sucked into his craziness more than a few times in my formative years! A fun, welcoming guy and an incredible technologist.

> being sucked into his craziness

Just curious what was he like in terms of the craziness? Partying? Skydiving?

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#57

Post by pizlonator » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

I had a lot of warm interactions with bob.

Here’s a great one: over beers at a certain venerable Silicon Valley establishment, over a decade ago, bob taught me about what a weak map should really do: keep a value alive when both the map and the key are alive. It blew my mind.

This led me to eventually coming up with the idea that a GC is a data flow solver rather than merely a graph search. Something that is at the heart of every GC I’ve written since, including the one that ships in JSC.

Thanks for all the awesome insights bob.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#58

Post by spullara » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

I knew CrazyBob for over 20 years. We met at JavaOne and at the time he was still a consultant living in St Louis. Bob was always the life of the party with a grin like a Cheshire cat. Eventually he got a great job at Google working on the core APIs for Android and created the very lightweight Guice dependency injection framework. We shared a distaste for both Spring and J2EE by that point. At Square he started the CashApp and created a strong engineering culture. Even though he was a college dropout he was one of the best algorithm guys I have met (e.g. https://www.beust.com/weblog/coding-challenge-wrap-up/). The closest we ever got to working together was when I was talking with Twitter about an acquisition of my startup and was getting advice from him he immediately put us into the process at Square. I think their pair programming interview style was the most fun I have had interviewing. We ultimately went with Twitter but I would have done as well going with Square.

Our families would hang out together when we lived close and I feel sick just thinking about his children right now.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#59

Post by pchristensen » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

I didn't know Bob other than one session with him when I interviewed at Square. I wasn't offered the job and don't remember anything else from that interview, but Bob stuck out as a very bright and very personable, compassionate, excited, and welcoming person. I never heard from him after that interview, but I wish I had met and worked with more people like him in the decade since.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#60

Post by ynx » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

iradik wrote: post #14

So sad. I met Bob once at an interview at Square in 2012 for the final interview. I believe he was the inventor of Google’s guice dependency injection library and the dagger library. I bombed the interview. I liked him anyway. RIP.

Precisely my experience with him as well.