As the creator of Spring, it might surprise folk to know that Bob and I were good friends, and that I had immense respect for Bob's brilliant mind and instinct for API design.
We first met 20 years ago, in 2003. It was the same evening I met Cameron Purdy and Juergen Hoeller, at the first ServerSide Symposium, in Boston. Bob must have been 23. He looked like a kid, although he’d already achieved a lot. Actually, he always looked young. If I remember correctly he had driven to Boston from STL.
We hung out at that conference with a bunch of folk who did a lot of important stuff over the next few years. It was an amazing time in the Java community. Bob was so enthusiastic and positive and full of ideas.
Bob and I first collaborated on something called the AOP Alliance, with Jon Tirsen, back in 2003. Interceptor based AOP-lite for Java. We wanted Spring and Jon and Bob’s projects to be interoperable. Tiny little API but better for Bob’s input. And useful.
Later on, we collaborated on standardising injection, including Bob’s great ideas from Guice. Since 2007, Spring has been better because of Bob. Even when you had a different opinion, it was always enjoyable and rewarding to discuss tech with Bob.
But more important, I have so many good memories of Bob as a person. We spent a lot of time together when I first moved to the Bay Area in the late 2000s and it was a ton of fun. Bob knew I’d just moved from London and was very welcoming. Lunches at Google, concerts at Mountain View Amphitheater, bar crawls in SF (Bob always knew another place and had infinite energy), hanging out at his house in Mountain View, where I saw him be a great dad.
Bob was a key presence at the infamous destruction party in 2011 after I’d bought my SF apartment and planned to gut it, and people were kicking holes in walls, writing on mirrors in lipstick and rolling in the blinds they’d pulled down. Memories are hazy but I seem to remember Bob practicing karate kicks on a door someone had taken off, and his brother trying to open a wine bottle with a shoe. So sad to think that Andy Gross from Basho was there also. Another brilliant, interesting one who’s also sadly gone.
It’s a measure of the positive impact that Bob had that so many people from way back have reconnected over this tragedy. I guess we all need to talk about our shock, and remind each other of how great those times with Bob were.
RIP Bob. You were a great guy, and a brilliant mind. I feel for your family and many friends and am sad we’ll never get to hang out again.