[RIP] Guy Decoux

ruby-talk
1

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/~bioinfo/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

2

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.

3

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

···

From: "Jean-François Trân" <jftran@rubyfrance.org>

4

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

···

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.

5

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 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.

--
Michael Granger <ged@FaerieMUD.org>
Rubymage, Architect, Believer
The FaerieMUD Consortium <http://www.FaerieMUD.org/&gt;

6

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 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).

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/~bioinfo/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

7

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.

···

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).

8

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

···

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).

9

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.

···

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim Hranicky, Security Engineer UF InfoSec Team |
E202 SSRB Phone (352) 392-2061 |
                             jfh@ufl.edu |

----------------------------------------------------------------------

10

loop { $ts.remember }

···

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).

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

11

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

···

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.

12

Je pleure maintenant!

···

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).

--
Rick DeNatale

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

13

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 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.

14

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

15

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.-

···

--
http://www.braveworld.net/riva

16

:frowning:

RIP.

···

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).

17

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

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

18

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).

--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end

19

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

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

20

Tim Hunter wrote:

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.

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