
Goodbye Joe - mononcqc
https://ferd.ca/goodbye-joe.html
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riobard
Fred probably forgot to mention it, but Joe, Mike, and Robert starred in a
short film _Erlang: The Movie_ , a very fine and concise demonstration of
fault-tolerance of Erlang.

The film has some magic power that I cannot describe but made me watching it
over and over again.

YouTube link to the film with fixed audio:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXmOlCy0oBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXmOlCy0oBM)

~~~
exrook
I'm fairly sure the ending lines:

    
    
      Hello Mike,
      Hello Robert,
      Goodbye Joe.
    

were a reference to the movie.

I went to go watch it again after reading this but you beat me to posting the
link here ;)

~~~
jackdh
Most definitely a reference, what a touching way to sign off.

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julienmarie
I discovered Erlang and Joe around 2008, and it made rethink everything I knew
about programming. The BEAM has now become my favorite development
environment. I always wanted to meet Joe. His brilliance, his jokes on stage,
his way of mumbling and walk all around the stage and getting excited at
things were amazing. Let it crash.

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3xblah
"Rather than thinking software is never finished, he wanted software that was
so simple it could actually be completed. The strength of your program should
be from how extensible and composable its usage would be, not your ability to
never be done writing it. On top of that, he wanted code to keep working
forever."

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QuinnWilton
I never met Joe, but he was also a huge inspiration to me, for a lot of the
same reasons you touched on.

His blog is filled with write-ups of tiny projects of his, all of them humble
and always written with the goal of crafting beautiful systems. Anyone could
do worse than reading everything he's written.

Thanks for sharing this. I'm glad to know that one of my heroes was as
wonderful offline as he was online :)

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stallmanifold
Joe Armstrong's passing is tragic. I never him, but he also inspired my own
thinking as a software engineer. Even though Erlang is a language from the
1980s, it still feels like something from the future. I have only ever
appreciated Erlang from afar, but it seems to embody what programming
languages should be for building complex software systems. I enjoyed his talks
quite a lot; he always brimmed with passion and life which I hope to maintain
at his age. He was never old mentally or in attitude, which was infectious.

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yellowapple
I regret not having had the opportunity to meet Joe, but my impression was
always that he was that exceptionally rare kind of person who exuded not just
heaps of wisdom and knowledge, but also heaps of humility and friendliness.
Joe will be missed, but fondly remembered and - I would hope - exemplified and
emulated as a positive role model. Even without me having met him, Joe made me
a better programmer.

Goodbye, Joe. May your supervisor spawn new processes to carry on your legacy.

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hlieberman
Such a good piece, written far, far too soon. Thank you, Fred.

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xuaib
Never met @joeerl , but Joe Armstrong made a huge influence on me as a
software developer. Erlang/OTP/The Beam changed everything for me. THANK YOU
JOE for your contributions, amazing talks and being Joe. We will keep "Letting
it Crash"

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amerine
Wonderful, Fred. Thanks for sharing.

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dvliman
Thanks for sharing about Joe. I have only met Joe a couple times in Erlang
BEAM conference and I can say that is how my memory of him as well.

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SteveMorin
Great piece Fred

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timflaut
I really wish more people would find the great work of Joe called Erlang.

Unfortunately, I feel like the raw performance scores on the various benchmark
websites (which show Erlang near last) is a major contributor to the small’sh
adoption.

Erlang really needs an initiate like Ruby’s 3x3. Where they are striving to 3x
the perf of Ruby

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jchiu1106
whoa didn't know Joe Armstrong passed away...

Still remember learning Erlang with his book and listening to him on podcasts
talking about concurrency about a decade ago... Erlang is not my daily driver,
but learninng Erlang's actor concurrency model has shaped my view on
concurrency and functional programming... For that, thank you Joe and RIP.

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scriptkiddy
What a wonderful description of Joe. Sad to say goodbye to one of the people
who laid the foundations of modern computer programming.

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WalterBright
What a marvelous eulogy and legacy.

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vitlachbach
RIP Joe.

