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Comment by philipscott | Hacker News Reader

62 pointsphilipscott20 comments

There are recent updates on his Instagram: https://instagram.com/tjholowaychuk?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Thanks for sharing. I'm glad he's still posting.

Back in university I looked up to Feross, TJ and Matt Deslauriers. Fond memories of hacking together a Node.js project at a hackathon and launching something on a free Heroku dyno.

I remember the idea being that he wasn't a real person or a group of people. Fun times. Hope you're doing well TJ.

I never believed that rumor. Coders can go through hyper productive phases where they are making something that never existed before -- such as server side routers in JavaScript.

We forget that there was a time when JavaScript was just for manipulating the DOM.

Hope he's well and getting a good night's rest tonight. I know I should, but here I am typing into hacker news.

TJ was mostly porting modules from ruby. When you have a feature set and an architecture that’s proven you can go very fast on a project. Mocha is substantially rspec.

Oh hey you're UW SE2011! I'm UW SE2021 o/

Small world

I'm fine :) just taking a much needed break from software

I was wondering about this too a couple of months back. Couldn't find any answer but seeing Apex.sh go away was sad.

Tj's choice of minimalistic design is still a huge inspiration for me, I still enjoy it to this day!

I naturally picked up to use Koa (Express successor), Pug (then Jade) and Stylus (feels more productive than SCSS) to boost productivity only to later find they originated from a same person TJ. Excellent mind.

And those are just part of his commitments.

Oh TJ was such an inspiration for me personally. All the rumors that it's a company actually made it even more fun. And then out of sight out of mind.

Think he moved on to other business, as posted. I always appreciated his work, too.

he moved on.

The idea of moving on from programming makes me sad. I suppose for some people it's a job, but to me giving up programming would be like giving up on writing poetry or playing music.

TJ has already produced more open source software (much of it still in use, despite being dated if not maintained by others at this point) than 90% of devs will write in their entire careers (between open and closed source), so I think if anyone has earned it, it's him.

I 100% agree that if TJ wants to retire from programming, he should. Pressuring him to do something he doesn't want to do is wrong.

My comment more of a personal comment. Imagine you're an amateur painter, and you enjoy painting. You live in the same era as Michelangelo, and you admire him. But, one day Michelangelo announces he no longer enjoys painting, and decides to become a sailor instead. And, you realize there might be a day you won't enjoy painting either.

and there is something to be said about sailors who may or may not have retired from programming of course

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with being a sailor. It's more a fear of change — thinking you'll always enjoy painting, and then realizing there might be a day when the passion is gone.

I once upon a time burned out on photography and look where it led me. People change, and we should celebrate it.

Where… where did it lead you?

Really?

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