Goodbye, Malcolm

Malcolm was brilliant, and sweet. When I submitted my first patch to Django, it was his encouragement that gave me the confidence and motivation to keep contributing. At Disqus, we brought him in for a few weeks of contract work, and watching him clean up the mess we'd made was perhaps the most programmatically-enlightening part of my career so far.

Strangely, this was his last tweet. "Malcolm Tredinnick ‏@malcolmt Woke up late, afternoon nap and I still want to go to bed early. So tired; wasted the day." Nothing about his life was wasted.

He also committed my first code to Django. And was amazingly patient with me while I floundered about during sprints that were held in Lawrence, Ks.

He was a great man, and he will be missed in many communities around the web. I was always in awe of his code, including some of the best refactors of Django.

For folks who don't know the Django world: Malcolm was one of the most prolific Django contributors. If you use Django, you use code he wrote.

I wrote a remembrance here: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/malcolm/

I only met Malcom once, during the Djangocon US 2009 sprints. Having never contributed to an open source project before, I naturally had no clue what I was doing, but he still managed to make me feel like I had something to offer. What a great loss to the Django/Python community.

I'm still completely in shock to hear the news.

When I ran the first DjangoCon back in 2008 I was just a 23 year old programmer. New to everything. All the people there seemed like superheroes to me. I was honoured to have met Malcolm and to listen to him speak. He was a massive inspiration to me.

Malcolm worked incredibly hard for the Django community and we're all better off because of the commitment he made.

Thanks for being an awesome guy, for your dedication and for your knowledge. We'll all miss you :(

In the age of everyone claiming to be the CTO or co-founder of something, Malcolm's first self introduction to me was extraordinarily short: "Hi Alex, my name is Malcolm. I'm a senior developer."

During one two hours conversation at KiwiPycon, he left the strong impression of being one who can argue very convincingly from both side. He made it clear, again and again, that as engineers, there is "no camp" for us to choose. Rather we should all be a bit more patient and make careful "case-by-case" decisions.

My Malcolm anecdote: In 2008 the Python users group in São Paulo watched Djangocon, streamed live to the local Google Office. I took and tweeted a few pictures of the screen, including this one of Malcolm: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbp/2833593771/in/set-721576071... . I loved it, he just seemed like the quintessential geek :)

Later that day (IIRC), Cal Henderson gave his "Why I Hate Django" keynote, and at some point my picture showed up in a slide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk#t=53m10s

"Don't make Malcolm cry" :)

Didn't know Malcolm, but after reading the comments here I watched one of his talks, great speaker, delivered the content in a naturally easy to follow way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXHknWKuG2U

Sorry to hear he's gone. My condolences to his family and friends. RIP Malcolm.

Wow, what a tragic shock. Does anyone know the details?

I've been working with @birdsarah at the PyCon sprints on our first commit to Django. We've had super patient help from core developers Julien, Carl, Aymeric and Honza. Then I wanted to get in touch with one of the people who'd originally worked on the refactoring we're working on, and it was Malcolm, who I'd never heard of, and I was told he'd died the previous evening, and obviously I felt sad about that.

I didn't know anything about Malcolm until now, but I learned Django 6 months ago to start my startup. Using it has been one of the greatest pleasures of my software development career. I understand from the comments that I owe no small portion of this to Malcolm. Without Django, my startup probably doesn't exist, and for that, I'm deeply grateful. My condolences to those who knew him personally.

Black bar?

I don't know him although I now realize I've watched a bunch of his talks on youtube. I'm very grateful for his contributions to Django. It's the best avenue I've found for myself to get into web development and it definitely seems like he will be greatly missed by the community.

Thanks and Godspeed. You made a difference.

It's bad that his personal website is not available recently: http://pointy-stick.com

Sad news - RIP.

I've always enjoyed watching his talks and reading his slides. He was a brilliant guy who will be missed.

This is such a tragedy. Malcolm was always very helpful and patient with me when I started digging deep into Django. We've lost a giant. RIP Malcolm.

What a terrible loss.

Rest In Peace

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How old was he?