The legacy of Pieter Hintjens | Hacker News Reader

The legacy of Pieter Hintjens

zombiecodekill.com

199 pointspavsaund9 comments

Pieter Hintjens is a huge inspiration to me, even though I've never met him in person. I have yet to find a statement of his that I don't agree with. He writes technical documentation in a no-bullshit way that is very easy to read and understand. You really feel smarter after going through his writings.

His life-long accomplishments in building open source community and ZeroMQ legacy is impressive.

It was really painful to read his blogs for last few months, especially the Fighting Cancer piece (http://hintjens.com/blog:123). I'm sad to see him gone.

I used to not understand this tip from http://cultureandempire.com:

There is. «TIP: When there is something that people are asking for, and you don't know how to do it yourself, announce publicly that it is impossible." Or, propose a solution that is so awkward hopeless that it annoys real experts into stepping up.»

For those, like me, who also have trouble understanding this, I found Hintjens answered this very question [0] by mentioning a post on his blog [1].

[0] https://github.com/cultureandempire/cultureandempire.github....

[1] http://hintjens.com/blog:73#toc4

Sounds like Cunningham's Law: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

"people before code" is something that my younger self could just not grok. Thankfully I'm growing out of it now, having followed the progress of several projects over time.

Thank you for this, it was an interesting read. I did not know of him until some days ago, close to his death but I am going to check out some of his presentations. May he RIP.

I too never heard of him until his final tweet showed up on HN, but his Stallmanism religion ( http://stallmanism.wikidot.com/ ) religion page is great. I'm going to read much more of his stuff.

Here is a pretty amazing post he did "A Protocol for Dying": http://hintjens.com/blog:115

I wish I could ignore death without having to ignore people I love who pass. I didn't know him, but when I heard about his story it moved me. His story and others like his make the worlds unbearable aspects worth it to me.

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