Henrik Gedenryd has passed away

Alexandre Bergel bergel at iam.unibe.ch
Fri Oct 14 01:48:24 UTC 2005


Thanks Goran for this info...
I had a good time with Henrik. We ate in a restaurant and went for a  
walk... 3 years ago.

Cheers,
Alexandre


On Oct 11, 2005, at 12:53 PM, goran at krampe.se wrote:


> Dear Squeakers,
>
> I don't recall why I started looking around the Internet for  
> information
> about Henrik the latest week - I have always had a strange feeling  
> about
> him so abruptly leaving the Squeak community but thought he had just
> moved on to other frontiers.
>
> I have now verified (99.9%, it is a very uncommon name in Sweden) with
> the Swedish IRS that Henrik Gedenryd in fact passed away in november
> 2002 at the age of 32. I recall he was working in England at the time
> and in an email he sent me just a month before he said he was moving
> back home to Sweden in november. I have no idea what happened.
>
> Henrik started participating in the Squeak community back in 1999, I
> think his first post is from september that year. IIRC he first  
> "fixed a
> few things" like for example getting beautiful fonts and a "nice look"
> before he duyg into other things, like Modules.
>
> He helped Dan and SqC at the time to create Squeak 3.3 - with support
> for Modules being the main feature. He put in a great effort but  
> due to
> various factors 3.3 never came to be a success - but I am sure it was
> not due to lack of quality (I have read his code and it is very good),
> rather the fact it was too "different" from 3.2 and people simply felt
> uneasy - so they didn't "move into the new house". And a Squeak  
> version
> that noone "lives in" just dies.
>
> We exchanged quite a bit of emails and the original intention with
> SqueakMap was actually to act as a complementary structure on top of
> Henrik's Modules system.
>
> Henrik and I met in person in 2001 when we visited OOPSLA together and
> shared a hotel room. I found it very interesting to hear his insights
> and I realized that, hey, this guy is probably a bit ahead of most of
> us.
>
> One thing that clued me in to this is his description of his working
> prototype of "Universal Composition" which he also wrote a draft 35- 
> page
> paper about (please *do* read it):
>
>     http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/Squeak/UC/UCpaper.pdf
>
> ...with a corresponding image including code:
>
>     http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/Squeak/aspectblt.zip
>
> (the above image was recently mentioned because of the fonts and the
> look, but that is definitely not the reason it is published, as the  
> name
> shows)
>
> I also recall a very nice dinner with him, me and Ian Piumarta  
> where he
> and Ian drifted off talking about weaving and software composition  
> and I
> realized I was out of my depth. :)
>
> At OOPSLA Henrik wanted to show his Unversal Composition prototype to
> Dan Ingalls and especially how he had rewritten BitBlt using it in a
> very beatiful way (see paper for details) but I am not sure they  
> really
> got time to look at it properly.
>
> Another thing I remember from that trip is how we played around  
> with the
> idea of using a transactional object memory to implement a reversible
> debugger.
>
> Henrik's Ph.D thesis on "How Designers Work" has evidently also  
> created
> a bit of attention:
>
>     http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/HowDesignersWork/ 
> index.htm
> l
>
> ...which among others Chris Rust (Professor of Design and Head of  
> Art &
> Design Research Centre
> and Head of Product & Knowledge Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam
> University) refers to in very impressive words on his page:
>
>     http://www.chrisrust.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/academic/research.htm
>
> Henrik was a really nice guy, even though I know he upset at least one
> or two Squeakers over the years, but who hasn't managed to do that? :)
>
> I think it was a great loss to our community and the least thing we  
> can
> do to honour his memory is to read his very intriguing paper on
> Universal Composition - especially today when we are working with
> getting Traits into Squeak.
>
> regards, Göran
>
>
>

-- 
_,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:
Alexandre Bergel  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~bergel
^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.







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