

RIP HumbleFool - shekhar101
http://www.quora.com/Competitive-Programming/Who-was-humblefool/answer/Lokesh-Khandelwal

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ad93611
Here is the highest voted answer on Quora

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"Harsha Suryanarayana, popularly known as humblefool to the coding community,
and as Lord among his friends and the people close to him. We lost him in an
accident on the night of 15th June'14.

Now everybody knows that he was the best coder India has ever produced. He was
one of the first red coder from the country and continued to dominate until
his last SRM. He was the TCO world finalist twice, and Google Code Jam(GCJ)
once. He worked on to make DP his strongest area (for the non-programming
people, DP is Dynamic Programming and is one of the toughest things to master
in programming). I have had the privilege to spend some time with him and know
him more closely and that is what I am going to share in this answer.

For the last one year, Lord was working in a start-up (that he co-founded with
Animesh Nayan) MyCodeSchool. I was selected in a 10 day Winter Coding Camp
2013, organized by the company, where he gave awesome lectures. But the 15
days internship MyCodeSchool, Hyderabad, (May-June '14) is how I came to know
him more as a person.

Lord had this amazing passion to spread and share knowledge. This was one of
his last conversations with Animesh : Animesh: "If we can make some money, we
can help more people," Harsha: "May be, we can enable 1000 people to help
others."

I also came to know that he gave up Microsoft in his college just to train the
college team for ACM ICPC. He never went behind big companies, his wife works
at Google and he could have easily been a Googler himself. He worked for his
passion. "You do not need too much to live. It's all the social conditioning
that makes you desire a big job and a fat salary. You can live with less and
be free." This is what he used to say.

Contrary to the second part of his TC handle(humblefool), the first part is
completely correct. Lord is the most humble person I have ever met. With the
knowledge and experience that he had, he could have easily commanded us all.
But instead, he was always open to us, and on many instances came for our
opinions and suggestions. You would never know that you were sitting next to a
person of his stature. Now you will never associate such a geek in other
domains. But Lord was awesome in every field. Maybe that is why he is called
Lord. Many know that I defeated him once in chess(that too on time) because I
posted it on facebook. No one except me knows the second part of the story. He
came back strong and forced me to resign from that game. Played tennis and he
beat us all most of the time. Always a winner in stratego. Banged on karaoke,
he hit the best score 98 twice (even without any practice). He single handedly
won Counter Strike against two of us (FYI, we are not noob at CS). He was a
complete all-rounder.

His thoughts were always full of clarity and vision. I had a half an hour bike
ride with him,(we had all gone to Prasad's for a movie, and not everyone could
fit in the car, so I was the fortunate one to come with him), I discussed my
career and future plans with him, and he made it crystal clear for me.

Memories flashback, as I write, and take me to his birthday, we had planned a
surprise for him. Never had I imagined that it would be his last. A photo on
his birthday treat. (Harsha is the righmost).

Harsha is a true legend. He has been an inspiration and idol of many indian
programmers. And as Animesh puts in, "He has chosen to go to heaven because
God needed a genius programmer there".

May his soul rest in peace. RIP Harsha, RIP the Lord."

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corobo
Image referenced in third-last sentence rehosted on imgur

[http://i.imgur.com/Q6kpmVi.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Q6kpmVi.jpg)

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edem
Is it possible to share the content somewhere else where it is public? I'm not
going to register to quora.

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hedwall
There is a small "Close this and read quora" button in that popup in the lower
right part.

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danielweber
Closing and reopening the window seems to get rid of the popup.

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mrmondo
"You must sign in to read all of Quora." ... nope!

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autechr3
You don't have to sign in...

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Angostura
Am I going to log in with facebook to read that? Mmmmm -no.

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pgeorgi
As always with quora, attach ?share=1 to the URL

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erikano
Hey, it works. Neat trick, thanks.

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yeleti
RIP [http://www.quora.com/Harsha-Suryanarayana](http://www.quora.com/Harsha-
Suryanarayana)

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bmm6o
Without the nag overlay: [http://www.quora.com/Competitive-Programming/Who-
was-humblef...](http://www.quora.com/Competitive-Programming/Who-was-
humblefool/answer/Lokesh-Khandelwal?share=1)

Original title: "Lokesh Khandelwal's answer to: Competitive Programming: Who
was humblefool?"

