[Pl-seminar] Sad News

[Mitchell Wand]

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/view/494

Sad News - Ken Anderson Dies Unexpectedly at a Conference

Forwarded message from Timothy J Hickey
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Cc: peter at norvig.com, Geoffrey Knauth , Kathleen Huber
From: Timothy J Hickey
To: JScheme Developers , Jscheme Users
Subject: [Jscheme-user] Sad News about Ken Anderson
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 09:37:37 -0500

Dear JScheme community,

I'm sorry to bring you the very sad news that Ken Anderson, one of the
co-developers of JScheme, died last night at the Spam conference in
Cambridge. He was in great spirits, talking about JScheme, when he
collapsed mid-sentence.

Ken was one of the three main developers of JScheme. JScheme had two
parent languages -- Peter Norvig's SILK and Tim Hickey's Jscheme
applet. Ken came onto the project in the beginning (1997) and built
the Scheme-Java interface that became the javadot notation. He was
responsible for the beautifully designed cache techniques that make
javadot so efficient. He also was a tireless developer, chasing down
bugs, dreaming up and seriously analyzing proposed new
optimizations. He was a talented software engineer who loved building
an elegant and simultaneously practical language. He was also a really
nice guy. Kind, generous, thoughtful. The world is a poorer place for
his passing.

Ken touched many lives and brought many communities together. I worked
with him on JScheme for 2-3 years (publishing two papers) before I met
him in person (or even knew what he looked like!) We've met regularly
since to plot the future of JScheme and to share our war stories of
JScheme in the world. He has played a major role in the Lightweight
Language conferences and was also an active player in the anti-Spam
effort. I will miss him, as I'm sure many other will as well.

JScheme will remain an active project and is very much part of what
Ken has given to the world. I am honored to have been his friend and
codeveloper.

Sincerely,

---Tim Hickey---

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