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ALS Sufferer Used Legs To Contribute Last Patch

Posted by samzenpus on from the a-moment-of-silence dept.

krkhan writes "This is a little old, but seeing as it didn't make it onto Slashdot at the time, I think it deserves a headline now. Adrian Hands was suffering from ALS and had lost motor skills when he used his legs to type in Morse code and fix a 9-year-old bug in Gnome. The patch was submitted three days before he passed away."

7 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Dedication by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know what's important to someone when they continue to do it from their deathbed.

  2. The human spirit by rjh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All of us like to think that the latest ten-core Xeon or whatever is the neatest thing since sliced bread, but stories like this remind us of what we often forget: the human spirit is the greatest hack of all time.

    The family is in grief right now, and my sympathies are with them: but I hope they also understand the beyond-epic level of respect we have for Adrian Hands, and how he demonstrated right until the very end what the hacker ethos is all about. May we all live up to that standard.

    1. Re:The human spirit by EdwinFreed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's quite remarkable what people in this condition can accomplish.

      Some years back I used to carpool with my father, a doctor. This meant each day I would go to the hospital after work and wait for him to finish making his rounds. But sometimes he would take me on his rounds if there was something he wanted me to see or someone he wanted me to meet.

      One of the people I met this way was a man suffering from ALS. The only things he could move were his eyes and one toe. A sensor was fitted to that toe and hooked up to a microcomputer (a SWITZ system, I think - this was in the early 80s). Despite the crudeness of this setup, he was able to write scholarly papers and even a textbook in his field (geology).

      Whenever I'm personally inconvenienced by some health issue or other, I often recall that meeting. And then I stop complaining abount my own lot in life.

  3. Mr. Hands by charlievarrick · · Score: 5, Funny

    Irony.

  4. Important by Weaselmancer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Important is a relative term. It's different for everybody. If you're doing something you honestly love, that's not a bad way to spend your last few days.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  5. Re:Strange Disease by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5

    I can confirm this. My wife suffers from ALS, and every day is a struggle

    I know it doesn't really matter that some completely random person on the internets says this, but I feel really sorry for both of you : I can only imagine how hard it is, both for your wife and for you to watch the disease eating her away :

  6. Re:I don't know what to think by Asic+Eng · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Being able to contribute something - anything no matter what it is - can be a great comfort for someone who needs to rely on other people's help.