[RIP] Guy Decoux.

[Jean-François Trân]

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).


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.


-- Jean-Fran=E7ois.


News URL :
http://www.rubyfrance.org/articles/2008/09/25/disparition-de-guy-decoux

[1] http://moulon.inra.fr
This explains the 'moulon' server name in the prompt shell
that can be found in Guy's messages on the Internet.

[2] ACeDB is a genomic OO and relational database system :
http://wwww.acedb.org

[3] ProcticDB : http://moulon.inra.fr/~bioinfo/PROTICdb

[4] PL/Ruby : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/pl-ruby

[5] bdb & bdb1 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb1

[6] bz2 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bz2

[7] MMap : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/mmap

 

[Tim Hunter]

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.

 

[Bill Kelly]

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.)

He will be missed.



Regards,

Bill

 

[James Gray]

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 =20=

in the panel discussion, which is online:

=
http://lsrc2008.confreaks.com/18-panel-ruby-designers-producers-and-consum=
ers.html

He was definitely a Ruby master who enlightened all of us when shared =20=

his knowledge.

James Edward Gray II

 

[James Britt]

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.


A tragic loss.



--
James Britt

www.happycamperstudios.com - Wicked Cool Coding
www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff

 

[Michael Granger]

I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the =20
month
of July 20008.

I am deeply saddened by this; the Ruby community has lost a great =20
mind. I personally learned half of what I know about Ruby's C API from =20=

Guy's posts, reading his code, and from email exchanges with him on- =20
and off-list. He was always willing to help, and was a font of Ruby =20
knowledge. He will be missed.

 

[Michael Guterl]

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).


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 Rubyist= s
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.


-- Jean-Fran=E7ois.


News URL :
http://www.rubyfrance.org/articles/2008/09/25/disparition-de-guy-decoux

[1] http://moulon.inra.fr
This explains the 'moulon' server name in the prompt shell
that can be found in Guy's messages on the Internet.

[2] ACeDB is a genomic OO and relational database system :
http://wwww.acedb.org

[3] ProcticDB : http://moulon.inra.fr/~bioinfo/PROTICdb

[4] PL/Ruby : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/pl-ruby

[5] bdb & bdb1 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb
http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb1

[6] bz2 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bz2

[7] MMap : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/mmap

It is very sad to hear this, but I thank you for letting us all know.

Guy will be missed.

 

[_why]

I was socked. He was one of the smartest guy among our community.

Here is drawing in honor of our departed ts.
<http://hackety.org/images/a-note-to-pigeon.png>

He was a smart one, always very helpful. He was a big part of the
many years we've all had together here.

_why

 

[Eustáquio 'TaQ' Rangel]

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!

 

[Pablo Q.]

bye Decoux....

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!

--=20
Pablo Q.

 

[Sean O'Halpin]

Hello,

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.

Regards,
Sean

 

[Rick DeNatale]

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).

Je pleure maintenant!

--=20
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

 

[Dave Thomas]

I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the =20
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 =20=

at some point in the future. Could his name somehow be associated with =20=

these grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It would seem fit to use =20=

his name when the community itself gives something to others.



Dave

 

[ara.t.howard]

A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a grant =20
program at some point in the future. Could his name somehow be =20
associated with these grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It =20
would seem fit to use his name when the community itself gives =20
something to others.

that's a fantastic idea dave. matz, i don't think it's ever been done =20=

before, but have you ever considered honoring ruby's people into the =20
language itself? Ruby.decoux. Ruby.matz. Ruby.nobu. or maybe just =20
'require "people"' - People.decoux, etc. what would these methods =20
do? maybe return something about them, or maybe something different. =20=

i've never been able to explain why i felt ruby was a different =20
community but the fact that i would even suggest this in public must =20
explain it somehow.

one thing i discovered about guy long ago when he was helping me =20
offline: he hated revision control. the reason? he had 'm=E9moire =20
d'=E9l=E9phant' - a photographic memory. apparently he *liked* to =
forget =20
things when possible.

maybe http://decoux.ruby-lang.org/ would be a good pastie name for =20
ruby - given this propensity to never forget?

i'll miss guy.

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/

 

[Jean-François Trân]

2008/9/25 James Gray :

We were recently discussing this at LSRC. I'm pretty sure it came up in = the
panel discussion, which is online:

http://lsrc2008.confreaks.com/18-panel-ruby-designers-producers-and-consu=

mers.html

Thanks for the link, James. I will watch the video carefully.

-- Jean-Fran=E7ois.

 

[_why]

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.

_why

 

[Jean-François Trân]

2008/9/25 _why :

Here is drawing in honor of our departed ts.
<http://hackety.org/images/a-note-to-pigeon.png>

Very touching drawing, _why. Thanks.

-- Jean-Fran=E7ois.

 

[ara.t.howard]

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/

 

[James Gray]

precisely. definitely would need to be undocumented ;-)

Yeah, this idea rocks. If would be awesome for our examples.

James Edward Gray II

 

[Jean-François Trân]

2008/9/25 Dave Thomas :

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.

-- Jean-Fran=E7ois.