Fredrik Lundh has died | Hacker News Reader

Fredrik Lundh has died

lwn.net

364 pointsfghorow48 comments

The library that I first used which got me stuck to Python was Tkinter. It was a welcome relief from building GUIs using GTK in C. The documentation which I used was from effbot (which seems to be offline now) http://web.archive.org/web/20180802131839/http://effbot.org/.... That led me to making Python my "primary language" when it still wasn't very popular and shaped my career.

I think it's hard, if not impossible, to overestimate how many lives Mr. Lundh's work has touched and improved over the course of his career. RIP.

>I think it's hard, if not impossible, to overestimate how many lives Mr. Lundh's work has touched and improved over the course of his career. RIP.

Yes. The same applies about tons of other people who have put their work out on the net, for years, which all of us benefit from.

You're not alone in that sequence. I think a few of us here saw "effbot" in that email and felt our minds simultaneously trace back where we heard it as our heart sank. He was a big python contributor, it seems, but I wonder if he realizes how much that little guide shaped the internal tooling of many major companies.

The effbot was an early mentor me. He had a brusque style, an excellent sense of design, and a wry wit. He thought deeply about programming problems and did not shy away from non-trivial tasks such as regular expressions. His ElementTree library humanized XML parsing and generation in Python.

I don't remember any particular early interactions, probably just hundreds of little ones over the decades. He was a force for good and will be missed.

If anyone is responsible for Python's success, after Guido, it's Fredrik Lundh. When I was learning Python, it was his libraries and his documentation I kept using and learning from. I feel this one more personally than others, even though I never interacted with him.

I used his Tkinter docs to write my first real Python program, in 2003. Two years later I was getting my first job as a Python programmer, that’s still what I do for a living. RIP to Fredrik, his work changed life for the better for many of us.

En legend har gått ur tiden. Vila i frid.

I've used a lot of Python in my career, and Effbot's work was a huge boost on much that I did. ElementTree was a boon when I was building an RSS reader, and PIL was a go to tool for image work.

There has been a lot written recently about "open source being broken", and it's true that the financial model doesn't always work out. But someone like Fredrik who gave so much freely to the community was able to impact people far and wide in a positive way. RIP

:( Without all the packages, books and tutorials Fredrik Lundh wrote, Python would never have become such an amazing language as it is. Vila i frid.

A good deal of projects over the years have relied on 're' at their core. Thank you, Fredrik Lundh.

And PIL (now Pillow), truly inspiring Open Source contributor!

Oh I didn't know that either, yeah that too. Wow.

and elementtree, one of the first "sane" XML parsing modules

Effbot was a voice of clarity when I went to learn Python, long before 2 was ready to collect dust on the shelf.

I picked up the Python Standard Library book used after reading some apress book on Python. The book was clear and a good guide to the language, honestly one of the reasons I began to push people to learn it.

Later, I probably ran into him on irc.

I've used PIL, and later Pillow, as well as ElementTree in personal and professional work. Without him, I suspect part of my professional life wouldn't have happened. Funny how that is.

My thoughts go out to his family. I can't imagine what it's like to discover just how many lives he touched.

Fredrik was an important contributor to YouTube over the years and truly one of a kind. In particular, he was critical to the internationalization efforts.

Whenever I ran into him on email or in Zurich, it brightened my day.

Such a good guy. I remember he raised a very gnarly translation issue one time in which we translated something that said “Share them” that unintentionally translated to “cut them up into pieces and share them at dinner” in Swedish. Fredrik was very passionate in trying to correct the issue in a hurry :)

Dela dem (vidare) --> dela på dem?

Duktig svenne

Swedish is fucking weird in its use of prepositions.

Kan du vara själv, din svedupelle.

sueidipelle

AKA "the effbot", a long time contributor to Python.

Sad news. He also wrote a lot of articles: https://web.archive.org/web/20190222003219/http://effbot.org...

I’m very sad to hear this, but I’m glad it was shared, and it’s great to see his work appreciated. His effbot site helped me a lot early in my career. I even visited last year because I hadn’t seen it around in quite awhile. Best wishes to all who knew him.

And Guido's message: https://lwn.net/Articles/878325/

Fredrik, your work inspired me greatly and your post “notes on Tim Bray’s Wide Finder” taught me how to think better about processing data, which made me pretty good at it, which created my career in data. Thank you - you had a huge impact. Rest in peace and sincere condolences to your family and friends.

It is easy to take for granted an import and the life force that went into creating that code. That PIL and the pillow fork exist can seem to be a matter of course but they are gifts. Many thanks to Fredrik Lundh.

In the early 2000s, ElementTree was such a relief after trying to use the stdlib DOM or SAX parsers. That was my first conscious use of effbot code, and I was grateful for it.

I really liked the look of his site, not just the content, which was, of course, good. I first came across it early in my Python career. It had a light green theme or look, IIRC.

Black bar? I don't think there's anyone who has used Python who hasn't used his work. His website was always amusing, occasionally useful, and frequently educational.

The announcement said it was sudden. I hope it wasn't COVID.

RIP, effbot.

Agree that this is black bar-worthy. His name is all over so many parts of the Python ecosystem. Author of etree, re, and the original unicode implementations for Python.

I used and loved his ElementTree and PIL libraries many times, during the height of my Python days

RIP Mr. Lundh

RIP Fredrik. Long live PIL/Pillow.

import regards

I believe the correct package in this instance is `condolences`

it was to hint at his role in the 're' package

import re(gards)?

yes

print("F")

import re

Rest in peace effbot

GNU Effbot

إِنَّا لِلَّٰهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ‎

https://pasteboard.co/pxT0WYx5nvgg.png

cannot translate!

edit: thanks @ comments below, need to manually switch to Arabic

Looks like a bug in their language detection.

Switch to Arabic manually and it works fine.

> We belong to God and to Him we shall return

Google gives me: „ We belong to God and to Him we shall return“ when selecting Arabic. I‘m just learning Arabic but I‘m wondering why op wrote it including the pronunciation marks which is very uncommon in daily use. I can imagine that it is a quote from the Quran

>including the pronunciation marks

It was likely copied.

> very uncommon in daily use. I can imagine that it is a quote from the Quran

They are common in religious texts.

Yes, 2:156 https://quran.com/2/156 it's said by muslims when something bad happens, especially when hearing news that someone has passed away

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