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Jim Weirich, Creator of Rake, Has Passed Away
SirLurksAlot writes "News is beginning to circulate on Twitter and various sites that Jim Weirich, the creator of Rake, has passed away at the age of 58. He was an active developer (his last commit in the last 24 hours) and has made many contributions to the Ruby community over the years, as well as being a prolific speaker and teacher. He had a great sense of humor and was beloved by many. He will be greatly missed."
Wow. He must have been, like, 6,000 years old! I'm sure rakes have been around since the dawn of agriculture.
Proverbs 21:19
He clicked something and beta came up...
Hi, Slashdot has sold out to Dice, and Alice Hill and her MBA goons are working hard to drive to turn this into another Slashington Post.
http://soylentnews.org/
Well over 2000 strong now, Dice.
WTF is "Rake" and why should anyone care? I gather it's some sort of Ruby thing, but again, why should anyone care?
Because Make sucks...
It's cool that he was still coding right up until his death, but that death was much too early.
Based on the Wikipedia photo It looks like he spent too much time improving his mind, and not enough taking care of his body.
If you look like Jim, it's time to change your diet and get active if you want a long healthy life. Tech like FitBit and Jawbone can help. Active gaming using Kinect instead of sitting with a controller, and spending 30 min a day weightlifting did wonders for me.
You'll feel better, think more clearly, and get positive attention from the opposite sex.
I was taken aback when I heard the news. My thoughts go out to his family and friends. My understanding is that it may have been a heart attack.
You will be missed Jim. RIP.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It's a great shame that he died so young but let's be honest, this isn't exactly surprising. If you're a developer it seems this outcome is far more likely than you'll live to be happy and fit into your 80's or 90's.
What's sad is some people will throw away their youth working excessive hours for some employer that won't care about them only to die in their 50's and they won't be famous enough to get all the kind messages like Jim has. Though I'm sure Jim rather be alive than having people saying nice things about him now.
We should recognise programming isn't necessarily a safe job and demand better rights.
as someone that values freedom of speech
Are you sure about that?
but is it time for Anonymous Coward to go?
I don't think so.
Let's face it... Anonymous Coward adds as much to a meaningful discussion as someone who drives past a coffee shop and yells out, "Look at me!".
Depends on the post. I've seen plenty of ACs who have posted comments I thought were insightful.
In the end, your post offended me. Time to ban Slashcrunch? Total lack of respect for my sensibilities.
Thank you Dave Raggett
First up, Jim's dead. He can't hear you. Maybe you should have thanked him last week?
Widely used feature? Is it?
"I can't believe I'm suggesting this as someone that values freedom of speech"
I can. most people become hypocritical when something they claim to believe in is used in away they don't happen to like.
Lets face it, a percentage of anonymous comments anywhere are, and always have been, crap. Maybe you should just read at a higher level?
See how annoying it is when some says "first off" and the never has a second?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Although I am tempted to agree with you I cannot. There are some topics where insider information is invaluable but identifiable posts would likely cause repercussions for the poster. We still need that. Anonymous Cowards on this topic are just that, cowards, but I don't see how we can get rid of them without getting rid of the more useful aspects of that role.
BTW, "OFF TOPIC" ... which fuckwit moderated that?
Bitter and proud of it.
Jim was a great guy with a good sense of humor. He was very active in the Linux and Programming here in the Cincinnati area. I have known Jim for over 20 years and he will be missed by many. He was a very avid Ruby supporter and also of OpenSource. It is great to see him mentioned here on Slashdot, but a shame to hear the poor comments made about a man who cared about what he did. Free speech or not, it is nice to be respected.
I don't think it has to be hypocritical. I can wish someone would be quiet or self censor, while at the same time respecting the right to speak. I can also appreciate there may be a time when someone wishes I would self censor and yet be glad that I would still have the right to speak if I felt compelled to do so.
In Other words I don't think a free-speech advocate is being hypocritical until he asks for someone else be censored, expressing a regret at hearing another's words is not a violation of the principle.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
A fine example of an utter waste of space posted anonymously. I'll respond anyway...
Points 1, 3, 4, 4a, and 5 are all variations of Why bother to try to improve something?. How about actually arguing against the specific suggestion?
Also, it is nothing short of absurd to call someone a 'control freak' for suggesting that an online forum have different rules.
It would have taken all of three words to give those of us who are not developers a hint about what "Rake" is.
I mean, for chrissake...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Jim was 57, not 58.
RIP
He is saying people shouldn't speak anonymously; which is the corner stone of freedom of speech.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I used to debate Jim on Usenet about software design. He was one of the best debate partners I've ever encountered. He was patient, detailed, articulate, asked good questions, and was honest when he could only provide anecdotal information instead of directly inspect-able evidence. (An example is measuring grokkability of code or designs to typical maintenance developers.)
A good many debaters turn it into a personal credibility battle when faced with anecdote-versus-anecdote impasses. Jim knew to let it go and let the stalemate be.
We'll miss you Jim! You set a great example.
-Tablizer
Table-ized A.I.
Since when? Make is great. Even more so with GNU Make. It's portable, language agnostic, efficient, fast, scalable, parallelizable, easy to customize, text based, and so forth. This is why Make is still highly popular after 35 years. Yes, there are blogs that attempt to counter every one of those advantages but they also appear to be highly misinformed or biased, or they try to use make as a full all-in-one build system.
Yes, there are bad makefiles out there, but you can not prevent people using tools that they have not learned well, this is probably the biggest fault. But a fault that exists elsewhere (ie, the person trying to massively customize scons without knowing Python). I actually think that many of the problems people have when using make on bigger systems will actually happen with any automated system, the problem isn't with the tool itself but rather the lack of experience with how to manage a build of a large system, not planning ahead for the complexities that will always come, ending up with a system that was built up incrementally over years.
I'm not saying Make is perfect but I have not found alternatives that aren't bundled with their own larger set of warts. Rake is not bad (better than many of the alternatives I think), but you have to learn Ruby and its regexps to get stuff done, and it's documentation does not seem as comprehensive and clearly defined as I would like.
Someone who gives so selflessly will be missed.
I saw Jim present this at the StirTrek conference in Columbus in 2012. It was a really good presentation. Life is short and we aren't promised a tomorrow, but this guy clearly was doing what he was passionate about. http://bostonrb.org/presentati...
WTF is "Rake" and why should anyone care? I gather it's some sort of Ruby thing, but again, why should anyone care?
I either didn't know about Rake or Jim Weinrich before these news. It's indeed kind of awkward to hear about the software and the guy for the first time, when the developer dies.
At least I like for someone to keep my air conditioning information up to date.
There weren't any more details
I've heard that he received a mysterious video tape a week before his death. The tape was labeled "BETA". He then received a telemarketing call asking him to visit http://slashdot.org./
Ezekiel 23:20
Uh, GP isn't arguing for disallowing A/C posts, he's simply pointing out the deficiencies in GGP's reasoning.
This is correct. I thought that was clear, but here we are again with:
You aren't going to get your way and there's not a thing you can do about it
Sigh. Rather than try to spell things out further, I'll just leave you a link: the appeal to force fallacy.
As for
no matter how superior you imagine yourself to be. Maybe you should go call your mommy now and tell her there is a mean man on the internet ...
Petty name-calling doesn't even count as a fallacy.
Yes. Make is great. A well written Makefile is the key. I just wish we could dump automake and it's kin. They excel at creating massive and obtuse Makefiles so cluttered with useless gunk that you can't even find the build targets.
Make is a bit like Prolog. The target is your query and as a side effect of satisfying your query source becomes a working binary.
"He is saying people shouldn't speak anonymously; which is the corner stone of freedom of speech."
Here it is a usually a cornerstone of just being a jerk. The fact that someone was down voted for suggesting that we behave in a civil manner is pathetic.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/