Wow, I am truly sorry to hear this news.  

I didn't know David personally, but he directly influenced my development as a Smalltalker.  When I first began Smalltalk in 1996 and was struggling with a problem, David responded to my question on the newsgroup (where at the time nobody else seemed to have the answer).  He really boosted my confidence in the community, and I really grew into Smalltalk after that.  I subsequently got to know the language and still try to do my bit where possible.  Smalltalk still has a huge impact on my way of thinking about software, and I really appreciated that response!

It says something about a person when they can answer the little guys' simple questions as well as the big, deep thought ones.  I'll always remember that little gesture fondly.


Brad

At 12:27 PM -0400 4/20/04, Sam Adams wrote:
> 
>David N. Smith, one of IBM's first Smalltalkers, passed away Tuesday, April 13, 2004. Dave was an ardent supporter of Smalltalk from the its origins at PARC through IBM's own versions.  He was the author of several books, including Concepts of Object-Oriented Programming, and IBM Smalltalk: The Language. 
>For the last several years he was a dedicated Squeaker and a frequent contributor of high quality code, including significant improvements to the Number classes, early morphic drag and drop, and the ever popular wandering blob demo. 
>Dave was a deep thinker, a dedicated researcher, a creative and supportive co-worker, and a good friend. 
>We'll miss him. 
>Expressions of sympathy may be sent to ssadams at us.ibm.com and I will forward them to Dave's family. 
>Those who frequent other Smalltalk-related lists may repost this message there. 
>Please note that this is David N. Smith of IBM, *not* David Smith of Virtus and Croquet fame. 
> Sam S. Adams, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Research tie line 444-0736, outside 919-254-0736, email: ssadams at us.ibm.com <<Hebrews 11:6, Proverbs 3:5-6, Romans 1:16-17, I Corinthians 1:10>>