Ruby Forum Ruby > [RIP] Guy Decoux.

Hello,

I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
Louveciennes (near Paris).


Guy Decoux was network and system admin at the Plant Genomics
Research Unit of INRA (Agricultural Research labs, where he worked
since 1982) in Moulon's Farm (Moulon's plateau [1], in the south west
of Paris).

He was an Internet pioneer. For example, he worked on Oraplex,
one of the first Oracle to web gateways. He deployed the first
website that gave access to an ACeDB [2] system by the end of 1993.
He had worked on bioinformatic free software, like ProticDB [3], a
plant proteomic database.

He was part of the generation of developers who switched from Perl
to Ruby in the 90s. While his mastering of Perl was already great,
his knowledge about Ruby was so deep and impressive that a lot of 
Rubyists
would have been very happy to have the same one. Guy contributed to
Dave Thomas' book, "Programming Ruby". Of course he polled for the
comp.lang.ruby and fr.comp.lang.ruby newsgroups creation.
He was maintaining some libraries like PL/Ruby [4] a procedural language
for PostgreSQL, bdb/bdb1 [5] bindings for Berkeley DB, bz2 [6]
bindings the libbzip2 compression library and MMap [7] class,
a class for Memory-mapped files.

To my knowledge, he was the only french person to have commits right
to Ruby MRI source code. I don't know if he was officially member
of the Ruby Core Team (I don't know if there is an official Ruby Core
Team list).

I'm not sure 'ts' (what does 'ts' mean in his electronic address?)
had ever been to RubyConf nor any Ruby conference. Well I don't
know if there is a french Rubyist who ever meet him. Was he mysterious
or secret ? Maybe he was just reserved. His colleagues described
Guy as reserved, kind, available, professional and technically
very competent. His messages on Ruby-Core or Ruby-Talk, sometimes
with a bit of humor, show all that.


This is a loss for Ruby Community.


In the name of french association RubyFrance, I present my condolences
to Guy Decoux's family, his friends and his collegues.


   -- Jean-François.


News URL :
http://www.rubyfrance.org/articles/2008/09/25/disparition-de-guy-decoux

[1] http://moulon.inra.fr
This explains the 'moulon' server name in the prompt shell
that can be found in Guy's messages on the Internet.

[2] ACeDB is a genomic OO and relational database system :
http://wwww.acedb.org

[3] ProcticDB : http://moulon.inra.fr/%7Ebioinfo/PROTICdb

[4] PL/Ruby : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/pl-ruby

[5] bdb & bdb1 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb
 http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb1

[6] bz2 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bz2

[7] MMap : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/mmap

Jean-François Trân wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

I'm sad to hear this. Guy was very helpful. He typically avoided English
in his posts, which were usually entirely written in Ruby code. I'll
miss his contributions to Ruby.

From: "Jean-François Trân" <jftran@rubyfrance.org>
>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

Very sorry to hear that.

I looked up to Guy as having the kind of depth of programming
knowledge I ought to aspire to.

I loved his terse posts, often speaking pure ruby.

Probably one of the highest signal to noise ratios in posting
we'll ever see.  (And I smile, remembering back that his posts
showed a discernible sense of humor, too.)

He will be missed.



Regards,

Bill

On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:50 PM, Jean-François Trân wrote:

> I'm not sure 'ts' (what does 'ts' mean in his electronic address?)
> had ever been to RubyConf nor any Ruby conference. Well I don't
> know if there is a french Rubyist who ever meet him. Was he mysterious
> or secret ? Maybe he was just reserved.

We were recently discussing this at LSRC.  I'm pretty sure it came up
in the panel discussion, which is online:

http://lsrc2008.confreaks.com/18-panel-ruby-designers-producers-and-consumers.html

He was definitely a Ruby master who enlightened all of us when shared
his knowledge.

James Edward Gray II

Tim Hunter wrote:
> miss his contributions to Ruby.
Wow.  I remember reading his terse-but-deep posts from way back.


A tragic loss.



--
James Britt

www.happycamperstudios.com   - Wicked Cool Coding
www.jamesbritt.com           - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org             - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com            - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff

On Sep 24, 2008, at 3:50 PM, Jean-François Trân wrote:

> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the  
> month
> of July 20008.

I am deeply saddened by this; the Ruby community has lost a great
mind. I personally learned half of what I know about Ruby's C API from
Guy's posts, reading his code, and from email exchanges with him on-
and off-list. He was always willing to help, and was a font of Ruby
knowledge. He will be missed.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Jean-François 
Trân<jftran@rubyfrance.org> wrote:
> since 1982) in Moulon's Farm (Moulon's plateau [1], in the south west
> his knowledge about Ruby was so deep and impressive that a lot of Rubyists
> of the Ruby Core Team (I don't know if there is an official Ruby Core
>
> News URL :
>
> [4] PL/Ruby : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/pl-ruby
>
> [5] bdb & bdb1 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb
>  http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bdb1
>
> [6] bz2 : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/bz2
>
> [7] MMap : http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/mmap
>
>

It is very sad to hear this, but I thank you for letting us all know.

Guy will be missed.

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 3:50 PM, Jean-François 
Trân<jftran@rubyfrance.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

Thanks for letting us know. I'll miss him and his contributions to the 
group :(

martin

In message "Re: [ruby-core:18872] [RIP] Guy Decoux."
    on Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:50:49 +0900, 
"=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jean-Fran=E7ois_Tr=E2n?=" <jftran@rubyfrance.org> 
writes:
|
|Hello,
|
|I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
|of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
|the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
|Louveciennes (near Paris).

I was socked.  He was one of the smartest guy among our community.
Even thought I haven't had a chance to meet him in person, he had been
a great source of knowledge and insight.  I should have exchanged
ideas with him more often.  I miss him.

              matz.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 03:15:02PM +0900, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> I was socked.  He was one of the smartest guy among our community.

Here is drawing in honor of our departed ts.
<http://hackety.org/images/a-note-to-pigeon.png>

He was a smart one, always very helpful.  He was a big part of the
many years we've all had together here.

_why

This makes me really sad. It definitely is a tremendous loss for the
Ruby community. I miss him, too.

Pit

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008, Jean-François Trân wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

Thank you for reporting this terrible news to us. I've never even
tried to imagine the Ruby world without Guy Decoux in it. It's tragic
and devastating.


David Black

Jean-François Trân wrote:

> This is a loss for Ruby Community.
> 
> 
> In the name of french association RubyFrance, I present my condolences
> to Guy Decoux's family, his friends and his collegues.

I'm in the middle of a project heavily using his Berkeley DB module.

Thanks Guy, and rest in peace. You will be sadly missed.

On 2008-09-24, Jean-François Trân <jftran@rubyfrance.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

loop { $ts.remember }

> On Thu, 25 Sep 2008, Jean-François Trân wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
>> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
>> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
>> Louveciennes (near Paris).

So sad to read that! He was one of the first guys who answered me some 
questions
when I was beginning on Ruby and was for sure a Ruby master, and as far 
I know a
wonderful person. Rest in peace, Guy!

bye Decoux....

2008/9/25 Eustáquio 'TaQ' Rangel <eustaquiorangel@gmail.com>

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Jean-François Trân
<jftran@rubyfrance.org>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).
>
>
Je pleure maintenant!

--
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:50 PM, Jean-François Trân wrote:

> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the  
> month
> of July 20008.

Like everyone else, I'll miss his presence, and his wit.

A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a grant program
at some point in the future. Could his name somehow be associated with
these grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It would seem fit to use
his name when the community itself gives something to others.



Dave

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 11:50 PM, Jean-François 
Trân<jftran@rubyfrance.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008.

This is very sad news. There is another thread asking for people to
nominate famous Ruby personalities. After Matz, Guy was the first
person I thought of. Easily one of the smartest people I've ever come
into contact with. His posts were of the true essence of Ruby -
concise, exact and to the point. He will be greatly missed.

Regards,
Sean

> > I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the 
> > month of July 20008.
> 
> Like everyone else, I'll miss his presence, and his wit.
> 
> A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a 
> grant program at some point in the future. Could his name 
> somehow be associated with these grants? ts gave a lot to the 
> community. It would seem fit to use his name when the 
> community itself gives something to others.

I second that motion.

Dan


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Hi Dave --

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008, Dave Thomas wrote:

> grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It would seem fit to use his name 
> when the community itself gives something to others.

We're definitely going to get together and do something in his memory
and honor. I'm not sure yet what form it will take. Dedicating the
grant program is definitely a possibility and would indeed be fitting.


David

On Sep 25, 2008, at 7:45 AM, Dave Thomas wrote:

> A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a grant  
> program at some point in the future. Could his name somehow be  
> associated with these grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It  
> would seem fit to use his name when the community itself gives  
> something to others.


that's a fantastic idea dave.  matz, i don't think it's ever been done
before, but have you ever considered honoring ruby's people into the
language itself?  Ruby.decoux.  Ruby.matz.  Ruby.nobu. or maybe just
'require "people"' - People.decoux, etc.  what would these methods
do?  maybe return something about them, or maybe something different.
i've never been able to explain why i felt ruby was a different
community but the fact that i would even suggest this in public must
explain it somehow.

one thing i discovered about guy long ago when he was helping me
offline: he hated revision control.  the reason?  he had 'mémoire
d'éléphant' - a photographic memory.  apparently he *liked* to forget
things when possible.

maybe http://decoux.ruby-lang.org/  would be a good pastie name for
ruby - given this propensity to never forget?

i'll miss guy.

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/

2008/9/25 _why :

> Here is drawing in honor of our departed ts.
> <http://hackety.org/images/a-note-to-pigeon.png>

Very touching drawing, _why. Thanks.

   -- Jean-François.

2008/9/25 Dave Thomas :

>> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
>> of July 20008.
>
> Like everyone else, I'll miss his presence, and his wit.
>
> A suggestion. Ruby Central was, I believe, thinking of a grant program at
> some point in the future. Could his name somehow be associated with these
> grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It would seem fit to use his name
> when the community itself gives something to others.

Another suggestion (not incompatible) is dedicating a future Ruby 
release
to him. I haven't got a lot of examples in mind, but it's sometimes
done in Open Source communities. For instance, the Debian 2.2 is
the Joel "Espy" Klecker Release.

But given his character, I'm not sure he would like this kind of honor
if this gesture was done in his time of living. He would prefer stay
in the shadow. I don't know.

   -- Jean-François.

I'm very sad to hear this.  His was one of the names that was, to me,
synonymous with the Ruby community.  He will be missed.

--
Avdi

Home: http://avdi.org
Developer Blog: http://avdi.org/devblog/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/avdi
Journal: http://avdi.livejournal.com

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 12:04:34AM +0900, ara.t.howard wrote:
> that's a fantastic idea dave.  matz, i don't think it's ever been done 
> before, but have you ever considered honoring ruby's people into the 
> language itself?  Ruby.decoux.

An easter egg in Ruby, what a fantastic idea. An undocumented
command-line switch, perhaps?  `ruby --about ts`  Or an obscure
method, hidden out-of-the-way in the Class eigenclass?  Yes, that
would be nice, a method returning a brief string about Guy so we
could use it in examples for docs and tutorials or something.

_why

2008/9/25 James Gray :

> We were recently discussing this at LSRC.  I'm pretty sure it came up in the
> panel discussion, which is online:
>
> http://lsrc2008.confreaks.com/18-panel-ruby-designers-producers-and-consumers.html

Thanks for the link, James. I will watch the video carefully.

   -- Jean-François.

>
> This is a loss for Ruby Community.
>
>
> In the name of french association RubyFrance, I present my condolences
> to Guy Decoux's family, his friends and his collegues.
>
>   
This is a shock and a big loss indeed.
Guy's posts in ruby-talk is one of the reasons I stuck with Ruby.
Trying to wrap my head around the code and figure out what the answer
was and going "I'll be damned, this guy just cranks out code faster than
I can understand it".
I still strive to write code like Guy and his style of answering with
lots of -self explanatory- code and few unecessary words is someting I
admire even as I constantly fail to copy.
He will be missed.
V.-

On Sep 25, 2008, at 9:29 AM, _why wrote:

> An easter egg in Ruby, what a fantastic idea. An undocumented
> command-line switch, perhaps?  `ruby --about ts`  Or an obscure
> method, hidden out-of-the-way in the Class eigenclass?  Yes, that
> would be nice, a method returning a brief string about Guy so we
> could use it in examples for docs and tutorials or something.
>
> _why

precisely.  definitely would need to be undocumented ;-)

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/

On Sep 25, 2008, at 10:34 AM, ara.t.howard wrote:

>
> precisely.  definitely would need to be undocumented ;-)

Yeah, this idea rocks.  If would be awesome for our examples.

James Edward Gray II

On 25 Sep 2008, at 17:21, Vassilis Rizopoulos wrote:
> faster than I can understand it".
> I still strive to write code like Guy and his style of answering  
> with lots of -self explanatory- code and few unecessary words is  
> someting I admire even as I constantly fail to copy.

I know that feeling all too well. Guy wrote beautifully terse poetry
that just happened to be Ruby, or so it often seemed, and many times
I've envied him that gift. Commemorating him some way within Ruby
itself would be an excellent tribute to not only his keen insight into
the deeper recesses of the language itself, but his willingness to
share that insight freely with others.

He was a true example of what makes the Ruby community so warm and
welcoming, and his passing will be felt by us all.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

On Sep 24, 6:50 pm, "Jean-François Trân" <jft...@rubyfrance.org>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

:(

RIP.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 7:45 AM, Dave Thomas <dave@pragprog.com> wrote:

> some point in the future. Could his name somehow be associated with these
> grants? ts gave a lot to the community. It would seem fit to use his name
> when the community itself gives something to others.
>
>

I'll second this.  I'd love to see a Guy Decoux memorial grant (lor a 
ts.
memorial grant).  What a great way to honor someone who gave so much to 
the
community.

Chapeau, Guy.

Ne serais jamais oublie

http://vruz.tumblr.com/post/51742289/elegie-pour-guy-decoux


-- vruz

Jean-François Trân wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).
> 

How sad this is, and how tragic: My sincere condolences!

Bernhard

2008/9/25 Jean-François Trân <jftran@rubyfrance.org>:
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

It took me a while to discover this sad news in the pile of messages.
I am very sad to hear this.  What a tragedy this is.  I miss him
although I never met him in person.  His postings were among the most
important that guided me through my earlier Ruby days. Guy, you left
far too early.

I support the idea of naming the grant program after him. I do not
think it is a good idea to name a release after him.

robert

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com>
Date: 2008/9/26
Subject: Re: [ruby-core:18872] [RIP] Guy Decoux.
To: ruby-core@ruby-lang.org


2008/9/25 Jean-François Trân <jftran@rubyfrance.org>:
> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

It took me a while to discover this sad news in the pile of messages.
I am very sad to hear this.  What a tragedy this is.  I miss him
although I never met him in person.  His postings were among the most
important that guided me through my earlier Ruby days. Guy, you left
far too early.

I support the idea of naming the grant program after him. I do not
think it is a good idea to name a release after him.

robert

> I'm sad to announce you Guy Decoux's death in the beginning of the month
> of July 20008. He was 53 years old. He died accidentally, intoxicated by
> the smokes of the fire that took place during the night in his flat in
> Louveciennes (near Paris).

Thanks for your contributions, Guy!
-=R