
Joe Armstrong Obituary - lelf
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/08/joe-armstrong-obituary
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c141charlie
I don’t remember how I found it, but after flipping through a few pages of
Programming Erlang, Software for a Concurrent World, I was hooked. Through
this book, and others I learned how to code and got a job at a big tech
company at age 37. Joe’s wit and enthusiasm for computer science was
contagious. He undoubtedly inspired thousands of people to learn computer
science. Through his book and tech talks, he also made functional programming
far more accessible than other resources. The little schemer, I’m looking at
you :-). Joe will be missed. His family should be immensely proud of the
contribution he made to computer science.

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mooreed
I wished I had followed Joe's career closer while he was alive.

I first encountered Joe in this video - a wonderfully funny account of modern
computing (from 2014)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4)

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rkachowski
Such a low res photograph.. I wish they'd found something better to represent
Joe.

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brian_herman__
Yeah they could have put one of his videos of strangeloop as the title page or
something.

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richjdsmith
That's really sad - he will be sorely missed by the Erlang and Elixir
community, and probably the entire programming community as a whole.

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danpalmer
I did not realise he went to my high school. The school really should have
pushed that more – as a student with a clear trajectory into tech they did
little to encourage my learning, and I eventually ended up moving so that I
could study computing in more depth.

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RickJWagner
"Joe failed the 11-plus exam and went to a secondary modern school before
transferring to Bournemouth grammar school for the sixth form."

I was glad to read this. I love Joe Armstrong's work-- the book, the language
are both great. (Especially the book. It just reads well.)

To read that Joe failed, then came back to such success is inspiring. In my
mind, Joe Armstrong has had a fantastic career, and leaves with only positive
impressions. We should all be so lucky!

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jskulski
Oh. I hadn't seen that he had died.

Rest in peace, Joe. I was just getting to know your work, but thanks for doing
it.

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xrd
It's great that a luminary in the field of CS got his PhD at age 52 (2003).

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tombert
That has always been somewhat of an inspiration to me too. I'd like to get a
PhD in mathematics someday, but it's a long way off if it ever happens.

It makes me happy that someone I respect enormously managed to do something
like this. Also, Joe's PhD thesis is a genuinely great piece of writing,
highly recommended if you haven't read it.

