Matt Trout has died | Hacker News Reader

Matt Trout has died

shadowcat.co.uk

214 pointstodsacerdoti86 comments

This comment [1] has a link to this obituary [2] of Matt. The comment is flagged, probably because the author's other comment is very mean spirited, but the linked obituary is excellent.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44523887

[2]: https://curtispoe.org/blog/rip-mst.html

When it said he died "penniless and alone" the first thing that came to mind was; he gave it all he had, and was still single-handedly exploring a frontier.

RIP to a headbanger of math.

Additionally, here's a Wikidata for him now if anyone has more to contribute there https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q135275712

Had a handful of interactions with Matt. Probably the last was sometime in the mid- to late-2010s. I essentially started my software development career using software that he was largely responsible for (unknown to me at the time):

  * Catalyst (web framework)
  * DBIx::Class (ORM)
  * Moo (object-oriented code)

These are, in my opinion, some of the best packages in Perl, and there are rarely counterparts that are as good in other languages. Have not found an ORM that is as effortless and featureful as DBIx::Class, for example.

I've read about his tough interactions with other people, and it does seem that, at times, he fell into the classic trap of loving his own ideas too much; but in our interactions (reviewing some of my code on a Perl project), he was really helpful and kind. Also amazingly quick. He read my beginner-level Perl code, instantly understood it, and instantly gave clear, concise feedback.

It's a shame he has passed.

This is very sad news.

As I said on irc:

He brought many people into the community, and encouraged their growth (like me)

I popped into the scene by sending a few Moose patches and then coming onto irc displaying an utter lack of understanding of anything

Matt set me straight, and encouraged me to send more patches and I ended up as the manager for Moose

and then inherited the ownership of literally hundreds (perhaps thousands by now) distributions

that work helped me move from being mediocre at my job to being stellar, and enabled me to move on to much better jobs

What server(s)/channel(s) do you like to idle in? I miss being on irc :(

I mean at a minimum #moose on irc.perl.org …

Which mst was a huge reason why irc.perl.org is still around.

alt title: Matt Trout (mst) -- prominent Perl developer -- has died aged 42

Matt Trout (mst) was a very big deal in the Perl 5 community, although he was a deeply polarizing figure. He was a big contributor to many Modern Perl projects. I am personally very sad he's dead. I enjoyed the time I spent with him in person, and always found him personally supportive, encouraging, and helpful, although it would be remiss to not mention that a good section of other people found him a very difficult character on many levels.

He wasn't a particularly heavy HN user, but here he is: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mst

For someone not up-to-date with the Perl community, could you elaborate why Matt was considered a deeply polarizing figure, please?

He would have been happy to tell you himself that he had some rough edges, would speak his mind unvarnished, and would hold strongly onto his own opinions of what he thought was right.

That sounds like half this community. I suspect the issue is what those opinions were.

I did not know him at all, have no opinion on him, and sincerely wish the best for those he left behind.

> the issue is what those opinions were

Rarely, in fact.

In my life, I've only known one person who has called me a “cunt”.

I'm sure Matt would have been happy to admit that he was that person. I'm sure he would have said that he had spoken his mind unvarnished, and maybe even that he thought he was right.

So what?

People say that a community will fall to the level of the most toxic person it will tolerate. For the Perl community, that was Matt.

Just a quick word of public interest - there are countries where the "c" word is really quite a normal word amongst friends and acquaintances, male and female. When you say that you've only ever been called that once, you maybe don't realise how much cultural information you're revealing. Seriously, look up something about the use of the word in Australia, for example. Your eyes might very well be opened.

I’m an Australian. Being called a cunt is still a really offensive thing to say to someone. You might jokingly call a friend a cunt in jest, but you say that to a stranger and you might have your teeth knocked out.

Don’t always believe the stereotypes.

Unless prefixed with good. He was a good ....

dumb, sick, stupid, other adjectives - generally not negative although could be in the right context - both in the Australian and North West England (where Matt was from) context. Just watch out for being called a fucking cunt. In almost all cases that one is pretty unambiguous. I do remember at one point having a conversation with Matt about how handling East Coast and West Coast North Americans was quite a different proposition from a cultural perspective, also related to this thread.

Matt would have liked this discussion. And given that his and my mutual friend has some actual legitimate serious expertise on obscenity in the English language even more so.

I'm not falling for any stereotypes. I'm responding to a post where someone said they'd been called that word once in their life. This surprised me, as a non-American very used to the use of that word.

As an Australian, how many times have you been called the word? In how many types of context?

It can be extremely offensive, used a certain way, yes. And it can be absolutely breezy, used another way. And context usually makes it absolutely clear, as in, there's almost never any ambiguity. Right?

In Australia/UK cunt is still very much offensive, just not maybe as much as the US. It's one of the rudest things you can call someone. Of course with very close friends it's fine, but it still depends on the person. I don't use it with my friends and I don't like it being used on me.

> Of course with very close friends it's fine

I know you wouldn't use it straight away in the British isles without first establishing context and familiarity, sure. But the comment I responded to said they'd only been called that once. This is culturally a world apart from countries in which the word can and regularly is used in a friendly, playful, lighthearted way.

In Australia it's even more common, and less familiarity is required before employing it. Still, of course, one has to be careful in some contexts. This isn't relevant to the point I'm making.

I am British and we don’t call each other cunt that much. Among friends with a smile on your face, ok, but otherwise it’s still probably the worst thing you can say to someone short of throwing something racist in as well. And calling a woman a cunt is sexist.

We don't call each other cunt that much, but of course we do it now and again with a smile on our face. Right.

My point was simply that the word is much more common in places like the UK and Australia, to the point where being called that once ever is very far away from my experience, enough to be quite noteworthy. A point which your comment literally confirms.

And, as everyone is rushing to point out, yes, it can be used offensively, if used a certain way. What is this apparent difficulty accepting that words have multiple uses, even sometimes the opposite thing. English is a very contextual language, tone and intonation and familiarity and etc matter hugely.

For example, your last point - calling a woman a cunt can of course be sexist, but what if you and the woman for whatever reason both decide that you like calling each other a cunt? If you think that doesn't happen in the world, in respectful and mutually caring relationships and friendships, you are mistaken. Some people simply enjoy breaking taboos, it can be healthy and playful.

If he’s posting about it on hacker news about how he was called a cunt by him then me thinks they weren’t, and never were, friends.

Point is even with context you’re still wrong.

I didn't comment on OP's story of being called a cunt, nor claim that they were friends, nor make any guesses about how the word in the original story was employed. From the other comments in the thread, it seems it very well could have been meant offensively in this case - but I wasn't commenting about that.

But anyway, that hardly matters - yes, I am indeed dead wrong in the made up argument you're having about the thing no-one said.

Ok so you just decided to randomly explain that cunt is not an offensive word in some cultures and in some contexts to some guy who complained he was called a cunt once and by a Brit.

No reason why someone might think your comment was connected to OP’s comment. Nope none at all. Nicely done.

No no, there's a very good reason people might think that! It's called poor engagement with the written word. Another way to refer to it would be making ungrounded assumptions and then acting like it's the agree-upon reality. Very common nowadays.

I'd like to take responsibility for your incorrect reading of my comments, but it would unfortunately make no sense.

I implore you to take a break from the insinuations and instead quote directly any part of any of my comments that shows me saying what you believed me to be saying. You won't be able to, because it simply didn't happen.

The word cunt has radically different patterns of use in the USA vs in UK/AUS/IE/NZ. More cultural knowledge is useful and good. It's perfectly plausible that OP was unaware of that fact, and I therefore thought it could be useful knowledge, for OP and anyone else, regardless of the original anecdote, but possibly related to the original anecdote. That's for OP to decide, I don't know the details.

Is that clearer now for you?

I didn’t bother to read any of that. Except the last line. I can’t imagine I missed out on anything at all.

Ah, thank you for sparing me another misinterprtation, how good of you!

Word of advice: learn to write and this problem you face won’t happen quite as often.

Writing advice from some pleb with the English comprehension ability of a garden gate, who probably wrote a story about his pet dog to scrape a pass in his O-levels - truly, our civilisation descends but deeper into the abyss

I read what you wrote, it was just nonsense. What’s sad is you immediately start to lash out and act like a gigantic cunt when it was pointed out how stupid what you wrote was. No wonder you’re on a throwaway account tbh.

> I read what you wrote

I never said you didn't. I said that you were misreading me. We could speculate as to what could have caused such a poor reading of such a simple point, but there are so many juicy possibilities, it's hard to pick.

> you immediately start to lash out

This is upside down - you immediately got snotty when I explained that the point you first made was in no way relevant to what I was saying.

I, on the other hand, accorded you far more patience than your low-effort misreading warranted. I attempted repeatedly to explain where you were confused, only indulging fully in riling you up (with great success, apparently) at the very end there.

And to be frank I didn't feel like I was "lashing out", as I didn't feel sincerely emotionally involved to begin with. Your original argument was laughable, and the way you immediately switched to sniping then came as no surprise.

What has happened is you jumped in with some irrelevant anecdotes, and then refused to back down when it was pointed out, and instead chose to invent a fantasy scenario where I'm making a point that I at no stage make. I've asked you to quote the moment where I say anything more than what I've now repeatedly explained to you - and you won't do it.

So no, as much as it would please you to imagine it to be true, this:

> it was pointed out how stupid what you wrote was

Has not occurred, except in the fantasy argument in your head. I don't mean that something has been pointed out and I disagree, I mean that precisely nothing has been pointed out, you've made no response, instead maintaining I'm making a point I never did.

Outside of your fantasy, then, on the off-chance that you want to step back into reality, I've made the following point, which I invite you to actually respond to instead of getting so terribly worked up: The word "cunt" is used very differently in the US than in various other parts of the Anglosphere, including but not limited to Ireland, England, Scotland, and Australia.

None of that means Matt Trout was using the word in a friendly fashion, and none of that means that the OP in this case wasn't being poorly treated by Mr. Trout.

It doesn't mean that there can't be nuance and variation in those regions of the Anglosphere I mentioned, either. For example, if you personally don't use it much, that would be - for the purposes of this point - of no relevance. Your previous monarch Queen Elizabeth probably didn't use it much either, and that, also, is of no relevance.

> No wonder you’re on a throwaway account tbh.

The real wonder is how someone on a non-throwaway account can utter such inanities and remain so unabashedly foolhardy about it.

> act like a gigantic cunt

You must have really had a hard time in the O-levels to have taken my comment so badly, lashing out with profanities and everything. My oh my. Where's that British decency and propriety the world knows so well?

And what would Matt Trout say, I wonder!

no lies detected

He was pretty mean to people on irc. If you didn't immediately understand what he said he'd verbally barrage you. Then again the whole perl irc community was pretty toxic.

Yeah, I tried learning Perl back in 2017 and the community was the worst I'd ever encountered. The language had so many bizarre quirks and they just treated you like an absolute idiot if you didn't intuitively get it. Left it behind and never looked back.

He "did not suffer fools gladly"

Every time I've heard that phrase used it's just describing an asshole

Matt was a child prodigy, and child prodigies have it notoriously tough. He and I worked closely for a while. There is someone else important in my life that has somewhat close to mst's intellectual gifts, and similarly to mst they also have difficulty controlling their reaction to other people. However, unlike this other person in my life, mst did know how to express accountability and had been on a learning process to deal with his limitations. Matt and I never had beef, perhaps because we recognised that our respective strengths and weaknesses were complementary.

'Child prodigy' is not an exaggeration here: https://trout.me.uk/prec/

You're posting this in a thread filled with stories which paint him as an asshole.

and child prodigies are notorious "arseholes" QED.

My point was that 'child prodigy' was not loose flattery or exaggeration by a friend, because he was at 'has newspaper articles being written about him' levels of child prodigy and was unarguably a child prodigy.

People like him made my life hell. Sad he died, but if he was an arsehole, then he was an arsehole.

I totally get it, some people found his mess very difficult and it could easily lead into a death spiral. Others had a very different experience. He was certainly someone needed to be managed by those who knew him well from time to time, when possible.

Does his behavior perfectly match the people who made your life hell, or are you projecting?

No reason to not say it plainly: he was regularly a total dickhead to people asking for help. But, also, he always gave people first-class expert help. They just had to "pay" by taking a bit of verbal abuse.

I spent over a decade in #perl on freenode/libera and saw so many abusive events that I eventually got tired of hanging out there, mostly due to him but in part also due to a handful of others displaying similar behavior. All the same I was always grateful for how tirelessly he spent so much of his personal time providing help, and I'm sad to learn of his passing.

Well yes, he was a total dickhead to people who asked lazy questions and could not answer the follow-up questions that they were asked. He was strict about teaching people that it is important to be able to explain one's problem clearly and follow debugging instructions, and was ruthless with people who didn't get that. On the "help" irc channels we saw a continuous flood of lazy people wanting quick solutions to their coding homework and after a while anyone would become sick of it.

I didn't much enjoy it when I was at the other end of it though, and sometimes he went too far. "Try to understand why the person doesn't understand" wasn't something he did enough -- sometimes the person doesn't know the right questions to ask, they just know that their thing doesn't work.

As a helper, it's hard to find the right balance, and I think the most important thing is that if you're getting emotional about it, step away and let someone else take the question. (I at least have been getting better at this over time.)

Yeah he always had the option to just not answer, rather than shower verbal abuse at people and push them away from the community. I only visited one or two times and that was enough, same for my colleagues.

> he always had the option to just not answer

That makes sense if they're just visiting the channel sometimes. But I'm guessing they saw themselves as somewhat responsible for the community and quality of discussion in the channel, and then just walking away isn't really a solution.

But insulting people is also degrading the quality of discussion. More so than just asking “bad” questions.

Subjectively, I agree, but not everyone shares that perspective, otherwise you wouldn't continue to see the typical "Genius but angry FOSS developer" personality in various communities. No one wakes up in the morning and decides to be an asshole, obviously they think they're contributing/adding more than they destroy, hence the continued behavior.

I don't think lazy questions deserve ire. One always has the option of spending 10 seconds simply helping someone, instead of spending 30 seconds on insults. He invariably gave everyone the full 40 seconds.

I used to know him quite well, though not much in a technical context.

He used to wind up taking home every single girl I introduced him to. He and I met when he pulled my FWB at a club and our friendship long outlasted either of ours with the FWB.

He gave me career advice that I followed that set me on a path to the great happiness I now have.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

A day on from hearing the news, I find myself particularly grieving his passing. We haven't spoken in a few years and, indeed, I poached one of his employees more recently than we spoke, but I'd like to share an anecdote. Maybe to just get it off my chest.

Matt used to be a regular in $pub. He was always there, frequently at his space on the left edge of the bar, frequently drinking snakebite and black, and as a regular to the same pub I got to know him. He was a man who could fill the room. He was a comforting presence of someone I could talk to any time I was there. He was reliable and engaging conversation.

Anyway, this isn't the story about the first girl I introduced him to who he took home, but actually the severelth.

I took a friend (who I very much wasn't with, nor wanted to get with) to $pub one night and after she and I sat and had a pint or two, we got chatting to Matt. He had an unmistakable charm and wow, did he turn it on.

We got chatting in the beer garden of $pub and we were just chatting, but in that deep and long way that he liked to. I really enjoyed that night, but I saw that Matt and $friend were definitely sharing eyes.

We spoke until kick-out at 1, when Matt invited us both back to his place. Now I knew full well that the invitation was for $friend and he was just being polite, but along I went, following behind as they got closer and closer.

This wasn't the first time I'd been to his and he lived in a flat above a shop on the corner of a stone building with a dome, right near the castle.

Inside the flat was mostly open-plan and you could see up into this slate dome. It served no functional purpose but it was quite the aesthetic.

Whenever Matt invited people back, he'd always invite them to play the board game 'Sorry'. He had an ancient copy and a back-story about how it meant a lot to him that, to my discredit, I don't remember. But we played 'Sorry'.

And as the night wound on, $friend fell further and further into his lap and the point became less and less about the game. He was trying to wrap up.

But I thought "no, you sod. I'm not going until this game is done!" He'd pulled out from under me before and this time, I thought I'd play a joke on him instead.

So I dragged this game on and on. I don't remember the mechanics but I absolutely refused to lose but without winning. I kept it going for over an hour at which point Matt and $friend were staring pointedly at me as I barely concealed a grin for getting to be his cockblock for once.

Finally, the last turn came and I decidedly lost. I was immediately and with urgency ushered out of the flat as the dawn chorus sang with my last memory of them cuddling at the door, scowling at me before he pointedly shut the door.

But do what you must, for I have already won. I walked home and felt like I won that one.

$friend and Matt didn't stay a thing for long, but I'll always remember that time fondly. As will I carry with me the love of Woodford Reserve that he taught me.

Now 10 years into my relationship, when I introduced her to Matt, I had to take him to one side and politely ask him "Don't take this one home." And he didn't try.

I've met Matt on several occasions, and while he was a challenging character, he was also full of life and ideas, and an inspiration. He was a genius in an old-school, no-compromise way. I have been away from Perl for a long time, but some of my best memories and some of the most intelligent conversations took place while with MST and the rest of that amazing community. Fly high.

Super sad to see this. I worked with Matt around 2004.

Super smart kid, very nice to work with. I ended up supporting one of the systems he built (in Perl). I used his Cataylst Perl framework for some projects after that because of him.

https://trout.me.uk/

mst is the reason I know some Perl and also managed to get me a Perl group cloak on Liberachat. I will miss him dearly. I've added him to the list of X-Clacks-Overhead responses on my blog.

I use Catalyst quite a lot - have been working on a new thing this morning.

Thanks, Matt, the ripples will go on for a good while.

Last post, just 54 days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mst

Huge in the Perl world, he will be missed.

He made a few nice replies 41 days ago; found on that same page.

You died way too young, my dear friend!

RIP mst and thanks for all the fish. DBIx::Class and Catalyst are still a core part of how I pay the bills.

Thanks for all the invaluable teachings about Perl stuff.

Jesus fucking Christ. I am so sorry to his friends, family and colleagues at Shadowcat. I don't know that I or so many other people in and around the Perl community would have the life experiences we had without being "voluntold" to do something to, say, take a small part in making a conference happen, or to submit a talk I wouldn't have otherwise done.

His oratory and presentation style is inimitable and he truly brought everyone up who worked with him, and even did his best to smooth over difficult personality conflicts on the p5p mailing list. He was instrumental in establishing a Standard of Conduct for contributing to Perl, as well. He was a staunch ally for the many he befriended and worked to bash through obstacles whether it had anything to do with his immediate obligations or no.

Fucking hell man. This hurts. Love you Matt.

Couldn't we have a one sentence description of what "shadowcat" is? (The main website is also down at the moment.)

> Shadowcat Systems is an open source software developer and software consultancy provider based in the UK but accustomed to operating worldwide via electronic communications.

> We offer proven expertise in development of networked systems and reliably automating manual processes from business workflow to systems and network management. Shadowcat is committed to Open Source technology and specialises in working with Open Source Software and open standards and protocols. Shadowcat also contributes back to the community with patches, scripts and occasionally full packages.

Maybe more relevant, Matt was a big deal in the Perl community.

In his bio he has the most succinct and accurate description of Perl that I've ever seen:

> Perl is a wonderful language once you get over the fact that a slightly quirky set of syntax and embedded regular expressions have a tendency to make it look like line noise in the wrong light. Once you're used to it, it's a hell of an expressive dynamically typed language with a huge set of libraries and classes available for it.

Matt taught me everything I know about how to make commercial programming creative, engaging, artistic/craftsman type activity, aligned with my desire to keep everything open source to the maximum extent practical.

Another former colleague who is way more talented than I am emailed me privately to express a similar sentiment.

You'll find Matt's indirect influence in things like SQLAlchemy, and chunks of the enduring parts of the javascript ecosystem as well. He was known in the perl community, but his unparalleled thinking skills have a much wider indirect influence

He's still idling in a bunch of irc channels...

and long may he idle

I remember this guy from IRC, many, many years ago. He was an asshole. Rest in peace anyway.

Eh remember him from IRC days

Sad news :(

42 :( it’s way too young - pisses me of when people spend days, months years of our time for their own benefit like it’s nothing

Here is a far more balanced view of the recently deceased. https://curtispoe.org/blog/rip-mst.html

where to vouch? this links to an informed, serious, and thoughful post, unvarnished the way Matt like things

(oh, i see, it already got vouched twixt the main page and my comment)

To answer your question, click on the timestamp of a dead comment if you want to vouch for it. (I think you need some karma level to do this.)

i had clicked on the the timestamp, that's where I was when I wrote "where's the vouch?" and after that I realized that somebody else must have vouched it already, otherwise I would not have been able to comment

When people rip on someone literally the day after they die - that tells you a lot.

i read that as a R.I.P at most but not a "rip" as in "mean". People have traits, some not always good, and that post seems to be a friend talking openly about both the positives and the negatives, not a stranger ripping on another stranger.

It's like three weeks in the making with counterpart review. Pretty far from same day rip-on.

Matt had a complex relationship with a lot of people, and I think it's correct from Curtis' part to paint Matt's character as truthfully as possible.

I loved Matt dearly, and I think he'd approve of Curtis' post.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com