I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in Louveciennes (near Paris).
Guy Decoux was network and system admin at the Plant Genomics Research Unit of INRA (Agricultural Research labs, where he worked since 1982) in Moulon's Farm (Moulon's plateau [1], in the south west of Paris).
He was an Internet pioneer. For example, he worked on Oraplex, one of the first Oracle to web gateways. He deployed the first website that gave access to an ACeDB [2] system by the end of 1993. He had worked on bioinformatic free software, like ProticDB [3], a plant proteomic database.
He was part of the generation of developers who switched from Perl to Ruby in the 90s. While his mastering of Perl was already great, his knowledge about Ruby was so deep and impressive that a lot of Rubyists would have been very happy to have the same one. Guy contributed to Dave Thomas' book, "Programming Ruby". Of course he polled for the comp.lang.ruby and fr.comp.lang.ruby newsgroups creation. He was maintaining some libraries like PL/Ruby [4] a procedural language for PostgreSQL, bdb/bdb1 [5] bindings for Berkeley DB, bz2 [6] bindings the libbzip2 compression library and MMap [7] class, a class for Memory-mapped files.
To my knowledge, he was the only french person to have commits right to Ruby MRI source code. I don't know if he was officially member of the Ruby Core Team (I don't know if there is an official Ruby Core Team list).
I'm not sure 'ts' (what does 'ts' mean in his electronic address?) had ever been to RubyConf nor any Ruby conference. Well I don't know if there is a french Rubyist who ever meet him. Was he mysterious or secret ? Maybe he was just reserved. His colleagues described Guy as reserved, kind, available, professional and technically very competent. His messages on Ruby-Core or Ruby-Talk, sometimes with a bit of humor, show all that.
This is a loss for Ruby Community.
In the name of french association RubyFrance, I present my condolences to Guy Decoux's family, his friends and his collegues.
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month > of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by > the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in > Louveciennes (near Paris).
I'm sad to hear this. Guy was very helpful. He typically avoided English in his posts, which were usually entirely written in Ruby code. I'll miss his contributions to Ruby.
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month > of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by > the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in > Louveciennes (near Paris).
Very sorry to hear that.
I looked up to Guy as having the kind of depth of programming knowledge I ought to aspire to.
I loved his terse posts, often speaking pure ruby.
Probably one of the highest signal to noise ratios in posting we'll ever see. (And I smile, remembering back that his posts showed a discernible sense of humor, too.)
On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:50 PM, Jean-François Trân wrote:
> I'm not sure 'ts' (what does 'ts' mean in his electronic address?) > had ever been to RubyConf nor any Ruby conference. Well I don't > know if there is a french Rubyist who ever meet him. Was he mysterious > or secret ? Maybe he was just reserved.
We were recently discussing this at LSRC. I'm pretty sure it came up in the panel discussion, which is online:
Tim Hunter wrote: > Jean-François Trân wrote: >> Hello,
>> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month >> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by >> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in >> Louveciennes (near Paris).
> I'm sad to hear this. Guy was very helpful. He typically avoided English > in his posts, which were usually entirely written in Ruby code. I'll > miss his contributions to Ruby.
Wow. I remember reading his terse-but-deep posts from way back.
On Sep 24, 2008, at 3:50 PM, Jean-François Trân wrote:
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the > month > of July 20008.
I am deeply saddened by this; the Ruby community has lost a great mind. I personally learned half of what I know about Ruby's C API from Guy's posts, reading his code, and from email exchanges with him on- and off-list. He was always willing to help, and was a font of Ruby knowledge. He will be missed.
-- Michael Granger <g...@FaerieMUD.org> Rubymage, Architect, Believer The FaerieMUD Consortium <http://www.FaerieMUD.org/>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month > of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by > the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in > Louveciennes (near Paris).
> Guy Decoux was network and system admin at the Plant Genomics > Research Unit of INRA (Agricultural Research labs, where he worked > since 1982) in Moulon's Farm (Moulon's plateau [1], in the south west > of Paris).
> He was an Internet pioneer. For example, he worked on Oraplex, > one of the first Oracle to web gateways. He deployed the first > website that gave access to an ACeDB [2] system by the end of 1993. > He had worked on bioinformatic free software, like ProticDB [3], a > plant proteomic database.
> He was part of the generation of developers who switched from Perl > to Ruby in the 90s. While his mastering of Perl was already great, > his knowledge about Ruby was so deep and impressive that a lot of Rubyists > would have been very happy to have the same one. Guy contributed to > Dave Thomas' book, "Programming Ruby". Of course he polled for the > comp.lang.ruby and fr.comp.lang.ruby newsgroups creation. > He was maintaining some libraries like PL/Ruby [4] a procedural language > for PostgreSQL, bdb/bdb1 [5] bindings for Berkeley DB, bz2 [6] > bindings the libbzip2 compression library and MMap [7] class, > a class for Memory-mapped files.
> To my knowledge, he was the only french person to have commits right > to Ruby MRI source code. I don't know if he was officially member > of the Ruby Core Team (I don't know if there is an official Ruby Core > Team list).
> I'm not sure 'ts' (what does 'ts' mean in his electronic address?) > had ever been to RubyConf nor any Ruby conference. Well I don't > know if there is a french Rubyist who ever meet him. Was he mysterious > or secret ? Maybe he was just reserved. His colleagues described > Guy as reserved, kind, available, professional and technically > very competent. His messages on Ruby-Core or Ruby-Talk, sometimes > with a bit of humor, show all that.
> This is a loss for Ruby Community.
> In the name of french association RubyFrance, I present my condolences > to Guy Decoux's family, his friends and his collegues.
In message "Re: [ruby-core:18872] [RIP] Guy Decoux." on Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:50:49 +0900, "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jean-Fran=E7ois_Tr=E2n?=" <jft...@rubyfrance.org> writes: | |Hello, | |I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month |of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by |the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in |Louveciennes (near Paris).
I was socked. He was one of the smartest guy among our community. Even thought I haven't had a chance to meet him in person, he had been a great source of knowledge and insight. I should have exchanged ideas with him more often. I miss him.
On 2008-09-24, Jean-François Trân <jft...@rubyfrance.org> wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month > of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by > the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in > Louveciennes (near Paris).
>> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month >> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by >> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in >> Louveciennes (near Paris).
So sad to read that! He was one of the first guys who answered me some questions when I was beginning on Ruby and was for sure a Ruby master, and as far I know a wonderful person. Rest in peace, Guy!
> > On Thu, 25 Sep 2008, Jean-François Trân wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month > >> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by > >> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in > >> Louveciennes (near Paris).
> So sad to read that! He was one of the first guys who answered me some > questions > when I was beginning on Ruby and was for sure a Ruby master, and as far I > know a > wonderful person. Rest in peace, Guy!
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month > of July 20008.
This is very sad news. There is another thread asking for people to nominate famous Ruby personalities. After Matz, Guy was the first person I thought of. Easily one of the smartest people I've ever come into contact with. His posts were of the true essence of Ruby - concise, exact and to the point. He will be greatly missed.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Jean-François Trân <jft...@rubyfrance.org>wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month > of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by > the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in > Louveciennes (near Paris).
On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:50 PM, Jean-François Trân wrote:
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the > month > of July 20008.
Like everyone else, I'll miss his presence, and his wit.
A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a grant program at some point in the future. Could his name somehow be associated with these grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It would seem fit to use his name when the community itself gives something to others.
> A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a grant > program at some point in the future. Could his name somehow be > associated with these grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It > would seem fit to use his name when the community itself gives > something to others.
that's a fantastic idea dave. matz, i don't think it's ever been done before, but have you ever considered honoring ruby's people into the language itself? Ruby.decoux. Ruby.matz. Ruby.nobu. or maybe just 'require "people"' - People.decoux, etc. what would these methods do? maybe return something about them, or maybe something different. i've never been able to explain why i felt ruby was a different community but the fact that i would even suggest this in public must explain it somehow.
one thing i discovered about guy long ago when he was helping me offline: he hated revision control. the reason? he had 'mémoire d'éléphant' - a photographic memory. apparently he *liked* to forget things when possible.
maybe http://decoux.ruby-lang.org/ would be a good pastie name for ruby - given this propensity to never forget?
i'll miss guy.
a @ http://codeforpeople.com/ -- we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being better. simply reflect on that. h.h. the 14th dalai lama
On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 12:04:34AM +0900, ara.t.howard wrote: > that's a fantastic idea dave. matz, i don't think it's ever been done > before, but have you ever considered honoring ruby's people into the > language itself? Ruby.decoux.
An easter egg in Ruby, what a fantastic idea. An undocumented command-line switch, perhaps? `ruby --about ts` Or an obscure method, hidden out-of-the-way in the Class eigenclass? Yes, that would be nice, a method returning a brief string about Guy so we could use it in examples for docs and tutorials or something.
> An easter egg in Ruby, what a fantastic idea. An undocumented > command-line switch, perhaps? `ruby --about ts` Or an obscure > method, hidden out-of-the-way in the Class eigenclass? Yes, that > would be nice, a method returning a brief string about Guy so we > could use it in examples for docs and tutorials or something.
> _why
precisely. definitely would need to be undocumented ;-)
a @ http://codeforpeople.com/ -- we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being better. simply reflect on that. h.h. the 14th dalai lama
>> An easter egg in Ruby, what a fantastic idea. An undocumented >> command-line switch, perhaps? `ruby --about ts` Or an obscure >> method, hidden out-of-the-way in the Class eigenclass? Yes, that >> would be nice, a method returning a brief string about Guy so we >> could use it in examples for docs and tutorials or something.
>> _why
> precisely. definitely would need to be undocumented ;-)
Yeah, this idea rocks. If would be awesome for our examples.
>> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month >> of July 20008.
> Like everyone else, I'll miss his presence, and his wit.
> A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a grant program at > some point in the future. Could his name somehow be associated with these > grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It would seem fit to use his name > when the community itself gives something to others.
Another suggestion (not incompatible) is dedicating a future Ruby release to him. I haven't got a lot of examples in mind, but it's sometimes done in Open Source communities. For instance, the Debian 2.2 is the Joel "Espy" Klecker Release.
But given his character, I'm not sure he would like this kind of honor if this gesture was done in his time of living. He would prefer stay in the shadow. I don't know.
> In the name of french association RubyFrance, I present my condolences > to Guy Decoux's family, his friends and his collegues.
This is a shock and a big loss indeed. Guy's posts in ruby-talk is one of the reasons I stuck with Ruby. Trying to wrap my head around the code and figure out what the answer was and going "I'll be damned, this guy just cranks out code faster than I can understand it". I still strive to write code like Guy and his style of answering with lots of -self explanatory- code and few unecessary words is someting I admire even as I constantly fail to copy. He will be missed. V.-
On 25 Sep 2008, at 17:21, Vassilis Rizopoulos wrote:
>> This is a loss for Ruby Community.
>> In the name of french association RubyFrance, I present my >> condolences >> to Guy Decoux's family, his friends and his collegues.
> This is a shock and a big loss indeed. > Guy's posts in ruby-talk is one of the reasons I stuck with Ruby. > Trying to wrap my head around the code and figure out what the > answer was and going "I'll be damned, this guy just cranks out code > faster than I can understand it". > I still strive to write code like Guy and his style of answering > with lots of -self explanatory- code and few unecessary words is > someting I admire even as I constantly fail to copy.
I know that feeling all too well. Guy wrote beautifully terse poetry that just happened to be Ruby, or so it often seemed, and many times I've envied him that gift. Commemorating him some way within Ruby itself would be an excellent tribute to not only his keen insight into the deeper recesses of the language itself, but his willingness to share that insight freely with others.
He was a true example of what makes the Ruby community so warm and welcoming, and his passing will be felt by us all.
