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Remembering Bob Lee

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#141

Post by dboreham »

shadowgovt wrote: post #33
matttproud wrote: post #26

Bob was a nice guy. We had an overlapping tenure at Google in the 2000s. He was one of the original authors of the Guice dependency injection framework: https://github.com/google/guice . When I was earning Java readability at Google, I was fortunate to have had him assigned as a reviewer. Having the review work so smoothly alleviated a lot of the imposter syndrome I felt at the time. I felt like a million bucks after…

I've never met a dependency injection framework I liked, but I hated Guice least. Credit to the minds who conceived it.

Dependency injection as an external framework is an antipattern for me. Ends up creating more problems than it solves.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#142

Post by cpurdy »

I knew Crazy Bob online for a while before we met. We both ended up working with some of the same packages (early Java enterprise stuff) for some of the same big companies, and we were chatting with each other on our blogs, and posting/arguing on TheServerSide.com at the time. I was visiting one of those companies (SBC) in St. Louis in '03, and getting on a plane to fly to SF to speak at JavaOne, when I ran into Crazy Bob on the plane. We instantly recognized each other, and we ended up hanging out for most of JavaOne, and a slew of conferences after that (various JavaOnes, TheServerSide Symposium, etc.) At one of those TSS conferences in Vegas, Crazy Bob married Mrs. Crazy Bob (yup, Krista went by that name online :) Not surprisingly, Crazy Bob was pretty damned crazy about Mr. Crazy Bob, and I wish I could tell some of the stories but they'd probably get me banned from this site. Anyhow, the wedding was on the bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise, and the reception was in a ... um ... let's just call it a specialty dance club. All night. Red bull and vodka to stay awake.

Bob worked on the original Google Adwords. He created Guice. He worked on the original Android. He worked at Square. Cash app. etc. His technical chops were solid, and he actually loved doing the technical work. In his spare time, he programmed his custom garage door openers and did all sorts of other crazy projects.

But what he was best at was being an amazing cheerleader. Sure, he loved to talk about his passion projects and whatever library he had whipped up in a 48-hour coding session the week before, but he actually put more effort into bragging about the stuff other people were accomplishing around him. And he wasn't faking it -- he really loved it all, and he really meant it. He spent hours and hours bragging to me about people he was lucky enough to work with, and I've met many of them, and they're all like "he's got that all backwards". Some of them I haven't met, but I swear I know them inside and out just from all of his descriptions. :D

He was also super proud of his little brother Timmy ("Oliver"), who moved out to SF running some high end restaurants, and ended up switching into the tech industry as well.

And of course Bob was most proud of his two daughters.

I last talked with him in February, and at least I got to tell him one last time that I loved him and his family. And while I'd normally (and respectfully) say RIP, I swear there's no "Rest In Peace" for Crazy Bob ... wherever he is, the music is turned up to 11 and the lights are on all night.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#143

Post by kevinb9n »

cpurdy wrote: post #137
kevinb9n wrote: post #134

At first, I didn't like Bob Lee. Then I met him. I didn't know him when he joined my AdWords team in '04. He was the next to join after me. He was 24 (I was 29) and he was known by a fun nickname and he had already co-written a BOOK ferchrissakes. Worse, he was going to be working on the stuff that I had asked to work on (but had been told we didn't have time for). I had him sized up all right. I didn't like hotshot…

For what it's worth, he still talked about you pretty much every time we got together. He loved his time there.

Wow. Thanks so much for telling me that.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#144

Post by kevinb9n »

cpurdy wrote: post #142

I knew Crazy Bob online for a while before we met. We both ended up working with some of the same packages (early Java enterprise stuff) for some of the same big companies, and we were chatting with each other on our blogs, and posting/arguing on TheServerSide.com at the time. I was visiting one of those companies (SBC) in St. Louis in '03, and getting on a plane to fly to SF to speak at JavaOne, when I ran into Craz…

> He spent hours and hours bragging to me about people he was lucky enough to work with, and I've met many of them, and they're all like "he's got that all backwards".

YES, that is peak crazybob right there. Thanks, this was beautiful.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#145

Post by krosaen »

I worked with Bob on Adwords and then Android, our time overlapping quite heavily at Google. He was not afraid to ruffle feathers, often getting into spirited debates on long threads or in meetings. He stood up to managers. He insisted on doing things the right way. One day I got an email from him, subject, "Ribs and Merlot?" - no email body. My wife and I had a nice time at his place - he showed me a bunch of crazy photos of him partying with friends during college, and we geeked out about programming. He really loved software, and discussing the best way to do things. I enjoyed talking to him a lot and appreciated him, "crazy" rough edges and all. The more you got to know him, the more it became apparent how friendly and generous he was. I lost touch with him since moving away from CA, but felt the shock and sadness upon seeing the news nonetheless. RIP crazybob.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#147

Post by floydm »

Very sad about this - I new Bob Lee since the beginnings of our career in the tech space in our early 20’s. He got married at the Star Trek experience in Las Vegas after a Java conference I used to run. Very honest high integrity guy doing interesting and exciting things. I’m deeply saddened.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#148

Post by christiangruber »

I met Bob directly, when Jesse Wilson and I presented our plans and approaches around Dagger (a spiritual descendent of Guice, to be sure) to him. He was gracious and excited for us. I also seemed to trail his path, as I came later to Google, and then later to Square/Cashapp/Block, several times working with former teammates of Crazy Bob. He was, in my limited experience, just a really generous and enthusiastic person, and a lot of my career choices followed paths he initial laid down, and I built on. I have mad respect for him, and too many of my colleagues are in real grief right now, those who knew him better than I did. I'm sorry for his family. This is senseless and tragic.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#149

Post by karianna »

I had the pleasure of working with Bob for a couple of years in the Java space formalising the thinking around Inversion of Control and dependency injection which was eventually standardised as JSR 330. His clarity of thinking, clean architecture and code are still exemplars that I send new Java engineers to go and learn from.

He was kind, took his time to explain things in way that the day to day developer could understand.

I’ll miss you crazy Bob, heart goes out to your family.

Re: Remembering Bob Lee

#150

Post by kevinb9n »

julienchastang wrote: post #27

I am sad to read this, this AM. I remember Bob Lee from when he was a Java evangelist / technologist / blogger / author. I believe he was from the Midwest (St. Louis?). He co-authored "Bitter EJB", I believe. Terrible loss.

(yes, your facts are correct here)
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