Rebecca Heineman has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#161

Post by erickhill » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

I had the honor and pleasure of meeting her in 2018 at PRGE (Portland Retro Gaming Expo). She was sitting at a signing table after being on a panel. When it got to be my turn, I asked her if I could get a photo instead of a signature. She quickly said yes and I bent down to get into the frame. She was extremely kind and always cracking jokes. What I didn't know until I got my phone back and later looked closely was that she'd given me rabbit ears in the picture.

RIP, Becky.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#162

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

devnull3 wrote: post #138

Meta: I think such black strip moments should be pinned at top of the hacker news while it lasts.

[deleted]

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#163

Post by altairprime » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:37 PM UTC

Dilettante_ wrote: post #47

>Heineman's cancer fundraiser is now collecting for her funeral. Am I crazy or does that sentence have, I don't know how to explain it, the 'rhythm' of a joke? Feels like accidental rhyming, a mark of bad writing?

My family would say that sentence “with a wry smile”, a useful literary phrase for that particular variant of humor.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#164

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:38 PM UTC

splitbrain wrote: post #38

Offtopic: several of the embedded Bluesky posts at the end of the article show "The author of the quoted post has requested their posts not be displayed on external sites." Seems not to phase the PC Gamer "journalists".

[deleted]

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#165

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #89

Pop-up when pressing back on mobile that stopped returning to HN. Sheesh, the mobile web is really predatory. Good that I don’t use it much.

[deleted]

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#166

Post by altairprime » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

empressplay wrote: post #14

@dang could we have a black banner please?

(@dang has no effect in HN comments. Contact the mods using the footer contact link for attention to threads.)

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#167

Post by matteason » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

enkonta wrote: post #139

matteason wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something doesn't have to be perfect to be better

That's not the argument that was being made.

Well the argument certainly wasn't "nobody dies of cancer in places with universal healthcare"

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#168

Post by throw_m239339 » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

Never heard of her name before, but I certainly heard of the game she developed, like many here. RIP to a prolific game programmer.

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#169

Post by mmmlinux » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

I saw her last few talks at VCFeast. Always extremely engaging to hear from someone with as much skill and knowledge as her. Amazing to hear how she built her own debugger for the (i believe, i have the memory of a goldfish) Atari 2600. I always tried to catch her talks if possible, if just to get a glimpse of what the past looked like. I'm going to miss having those to look forward to.

RIP

Re: Rebecca Heineman has died

#170

Post by archon810 » Tue, Nov 18, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #117

Huge loss to the community. She was, by all accounts, an amazing programmer. I remember when she uploaded the source code of her Doom 3DO port she indicated that she had to write her own string lib because the base one sucked: > I had to write my own string.h ANSI C library because the one 3DO supplied with their compiler had bugs! string.h??? How can you screw that up!?!?! They did! I spent a day writing all of the…

Not just "write my own string lib", but "write my own string lib in assembly"! Wow.