

Goodbye, Malcolm - LeafStorm
https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2013/mar/19/goodbye-malcolm/

======
bdr
Malcolm was brilliant, and sweet. When I submitted my first patch to Django,
it was his encouragement that gave me the confidence and motivation to keep
contributing. At Disqus, we brought him in for a few weeks of contract work,
and watching him clean up the mess we'd made was perhaps the most
programmatically-enlightening part of my career so far.

~~~
oggy
Same here, it was him who committed my first Django patch. He also came across
as an incredibly nice person, with very thoughtful and kind comments. I've
also read some of his ORM code and that was some of the nicest Python I've
ever read.

Unfortunately I've never had a chance to meet him, and I haven't really been
following the happenings in Django-world for a long time now, but I still felt
really saddened seeing the news. Condolences to friends and family.

------
forsaken
He also committed my first code to Django. And was amazingly patient with me
while I floundered about during sprints that were held in Lawrence, Ks.

He was a great man, and he will be missed in many communities around the web.
I was always in awe of his code, including some of the best refactors of
Django.

~~~
jpitz
So, that I may thoroughly hijack this thoughtful comment: who, in the OS
community, is like Malcolm was? I want to interact with them. I want my first
commit to a project to be through them.

~~~
po
In my opinion, the Django core team is full of people who have the same
spirit. Many of the core developers [1] are intelligent, professional,
introspective and patient and encouraging with new developers. The dedication
to civility and quality of community is one of my favorite things about
Django.

It's important to take a moment to remember and pay respect when we lose a
community member, but as you're expressing here, it is also important to look
around and recognize the talent and kindness around us that we can still learn
from.

[1]
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/committers/#...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/committers/#core-
developers)

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tkt
Strangely, this was his last tweet. "Malcolm Tredinnick ‏@malcolmt Woke up
late, afternoon nap and I still want to go to bed early. So tired; wasted the
day." Nothing about his life was wasted.

~~~
hluska
I agree completely - nothing about his life was wasted.

Thank you for writing this comment - if I could, I would give you one hundred
up votes for it. :(

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adrianh
For folks who don't know the Django world: Malcolm was one of the most
prolific Django contributors. If you use Django, you use code he wrote.

I wrote a remembrance here: <http://www.holovaty.com/writing/malcolm/>

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fvox13
I only met Malcom once, during the Djangocon US 2009 sprints. Having never
contributed to an open source project before, I naturally had no clue what I
was doing, but he still managed to make me feel like I had something to offer.
What a great loss to the Django/Python community.

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rlofthouse
I'm still completely in shock to hear the news.

When I ran the first DjangoCon back in 2008 I was just a 23 year old
programmer. New to everything. All the people there seemed like superheroes to
me. I was honoured to have met Malcolm and to listen to him speak. He was a
massive inspiration to me.

Malcolm worked incredibly hard for the Django community and we're all better
off because of the commitment he made.

Thanks for being an awesome guy, for your dedication and for your knowledge.
We'll all miss you :(

------
alexdong
In the age of everyone claiming to be the CTO or co-founder of something,
Malcolm's first self introduction to me was extraordinarily short: "Hi Alex,
my name is Malcolm. I'm a senior developer."

During one two hours conversation at KiwiPycon, he left the strong impression
of being one who can argue very convincingly from both side. He made it clear,
again and again, that as engineers, there is "no camp" for us to choose.
Rather we should all be a bit more patient and make careful "case-by-case"
decisions.

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erre
My Malcolm anecdote: In 2008 the Python users group in São Paulo watched
Djangocon, streamed live to the local Google Office. I took and tweeted a few
pictures of the screen, including this one of Malcolm:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbp/2833593771/in/set-721576071...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbp/2833593771/in/set-72157607173551965)
. I loved it, he just seemed like the quintessential geek :)

Later that day (IIRC), Cal Henderson gave his "Why I Hate Django" keynote, and
at some point my picture showed up in a slide:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk#t=53m10s>

"Don't make Malcolm cry" :)

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ZenoArrow
Didn't know Malcolm, but after reading the comments here I watched one of his
talks, great speaker, delivered the content in a naturally easy to follow way:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXHknWKuG2U>

Sorry to hear he's gone. My condolences to his family and friends. RIP
Malcolm.

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bdesimone
Wow, what a tragic shock. Does anyone know the details?

~~~
jnazario
i can't confirm if these are true or not but some details may be in here:

[http://storify.com/adrianholovaty/malcolm-tredinnick-
memoria...](http://storify.com/adrianholovaty/malcolm-tredinnick-memorial)

very sorry for his friends, family, and the community.

~~~
shrikant
I'd not take any details from there to be true just yet, since I just saw
someone else on Twitter say it was due to a brain aneurysm.

Depressing news -- RIP Malcolm.

------
tobych
I've been working with @birdsarah at the PyCon sprints on our first commit to
Django. We've had super patient help from core developers Julien, Carl,
Aymeric and Honza. Then I wanted to get in touch with one of the people who'd
originally worked on the refactoring we're working on, and it was Malcolm, who
I'd never heard of, and I was told he'd died the previous evening, and
obviously I felt sad about that.

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acjohnson55
I didn't know anything about Malcolm until now, but I learned Django 6 months
ago to start my startup. Using it has been one of the greatest pleasures of my
software development career. I understand from the comments that I owe no
small portion of this to Malcolm. Without Django, my startup probably doesn't
exist, and for that, I'm deeply grateful. My condolences to those who knew him
personally.

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niggler
Black bar?

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mladenkovacevic
I don't know him although I now realize I've watched a bunch of his talks on
youtube. I'm very grateful for his contributions to Django. It's the best
avenue I've found for myself to get into web development and it definitely
seems like he will be greatly missed by the community.

------
harold
Thanks and Godspeed. You made a difference.

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turingbook
It's bad that his personal website is not available recently: <http://pointy-
stick.com>

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countessa
Sad news - RIP.

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thedz
I've always enjoyed watching his talks and reading his slides. He was a
brilliant guy who will be missed.

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unvs
This is such a tragedy. Malcolm was always very helpful and patient with me
when I started digging deep into Django. We've lost a giant. RIP Malcolm.

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chrj
What a terrible loss.

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qoo
Rest In Peace

------
mcos
.

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ttrreeww
How old was he?

~~~
alaithea
His LinkedIn profile says he went to university in '89-'92, which would put
him in his early forties, if he went at a usual age.

~~~
ttrreeww
Damn, there's a lot of early software people death lately...

~~~
hluska
I have noticed the same thing.

I hope that I just notice all of these software deaths because I'm involved in
software, but I feel like we're losing too many amazing people way too soon.

Everyone please take care of yourselves.

