Remembering Bob Lee

Great loss to tech world.

I have used Guice and then Dagger in projects. I admired the simplicity and his thought process which might have gone through to create these amazing projects.

Bob you'll be missed.

My comment wasn't directed at @benburton, I was just pointing out amongst all the warm memories of a very decent human being that San Francisco is becoming increasingly lawless.

I was badly beaten and robbed 12 years ago in the early hours by an unknown assailant downtown. It is exponentially worse today and something needs to happen and fast to get this under control so more people don't die or are badly injured and to stem the flow of talent leaving the area.

I knew Bob because of his work on Guice. After I watched back one of his early talks I was intrigued by the project. I got involved on the mailing list and he was always there to help. I was early in my career, and he showed me that you can be a nice person on the internet. His example led me to pay it forward and continue to help others on the mailing list.

Then I wrote a book about Guice. As I remember it Apress contacted him to do it. It wasn’t something he was able to take on, so he suggested Dhanji, who later joined him at Google and also Square. Dhanji wrote some of the first extension libraries for Guice with Warp Persist, and later worked on the official web extensions. It turned out Dhanji was already writing another book for Manning and he didn’t want to do both. So he sent them to me, and I’m an author now. Because Bob inspired me to pay it forward.

In my mind it was be fitting for Bob to write the foreword for my book. At the following Javapolis conference in Belgium he was a speaker, which I figured was the perfect opportunity to ask. He got mobbed after his talk but later I found him sitting at a table (next to Josh Bloch). So I went up to him and introduced myself. His eyes lit up and he was so excited to finally meet me. Of course the excitement was all mine. I asked him if he would write the foreword for the book I was writing. He didn’t seem to think about it and immediately agreed. We then talked a bit about the conference and I left him be as I didn’t want to be a bother.

I sent him a draft copy of the book and a couple of weeks later he came through and sent me the foreword he had written. It was perfect, the first version went straight in the book.

We’ve had a few other interactions over the years. I would’ve loved to work with him but it was never the right time for me to move to the US.

Bob inspired me to be a better version of me and I’ll never forget that. I’m still in shock by this news. And being a father myself now, it hits extra hard. Sending all the love to his family and may he RIP.

RIP BOB !!!

You're correct. But HN is a tough crowd and if he didn't deserve it, there's no way this thread would be at #1 right now.

Just read through the comments—this is an extremely rare occasion.