
Dean Allen, R.I.P. - kbd
https://om.co/2018/01/18/dean-allen-rest-in-peace/
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chipotle_coyote
I suspect a lot of HN folks don't know who Dean Allen is (was), which is a
little unfortunate. He was an early and strong advocate of, well, making the
web readable and beautiful -- and of keeping in mind that those two things
aren't mutually exclusive, something we've occasionally lost sight of in the
years since.

He created Textile, a Markdown-like "lightweight markup" language that
actually predates Markdown (and is, by some measures, more powerful). He went
on to create Textpattern, a blogging system that, like WordPress, bloomed into
a lightweight CMS -- but unlike WordPress, TXP (as its fans call it) has a
_much_ better template and extension system. And, Allen created TextDrive, an
early shared hosting service that, at least until its unfortunate-in-
retrospect merger with Joyent, was a power user dream. (No offense to the
folks at Joyent -- well, not much -- but TextDrive became their transparently
unloved "low end" brand surprisingly quickly.)

~~~
elijahwright
The Joyent/TextDrive situation was more difficult than most people dream of.
[I worked at Joyent from early 2010 till 2014 or so... post merger, and on
into several attempted revivals of TextDrive...]

Dean was much loved by his fans and seen as intractable and 'difficult' by
others.

Still - one deserves to rest in peace and not be spoken ill of. Good bye,
Dean, and thanks for what you did, and what the space you helped build, has
done for several internet communities (textile, textpattern, early Rails,
early javascript-on-the-server...) that will yet live on.

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accordionclown
dean allen never got the respect or the credit he deserved.

where most people are trying to "monetize" the web, his focus was on making it
more "humane". it's still not too late to see that he was right.

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petecooper
Textpattern user here.

The upcoming Textpattern 4.7.0 will be released in memory of Dean Allen.

Cheers, Dean.

[https://github.com/textpattern/textpattern/commit/7d41b1ada4...](https://github.com/textpattern/textpattern/commit/7d41b1ada4c48f5eed8b15e3ba5c1e9c4a12f823)

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kbd
John Gruber wrote a tribute to Allen as well:

[https://daringfireball.net/2018/01/dean_allen](https://daringfireball.net/2018/01/dean_allen)

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bionicbrian
Bummer. I was a fan. Just went back to look at my welcome email for TextDrive
from May 31, 2005.

