I just read them so I hope Yoshiki Ohshima won't mind to forward his
memories on Andreas to the mailing lists too.

	http://d.hatena.ne.jp/squeaker/20130115#p2

Yoshiki wrote:

Andreas Raab, my friend and colleague of fourteen years, just passed
away (he was only in his mid- 40's). He had a razor-sharp brain, and
could write best-quality code. Not only that, he could manage projects
and get a group of people to work. Alan Kay and David Smith say that
Andreas is one of the top three programmers they have ever met. This
says a lot.

The way I got to know Andreas was through a software project called
Squeak. He ported the Squeak virtual machine to Windows while he was a
Ph.D student at the Magdeburg university in 1997. The core team members
of Squeak, led by Alan Kay, were very much impressed with his talent.
They basically had no way to let him go somewhere else. So when Andreas
graduated, they just hired him and took him to California. It didn't
take long that he became the productive members of the core team.

I was also a Ph.D student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology around
that time. Prof. Satoshi Matsuoka had a connection to a member of the
Squeak Central, and that led me to try to port the virtual machine to a
PDA called Sharp Zaurus. In 1998, I managed to make it (barely) work,
much of it can be attributed to reading the code Andreas had written. By
doing so, I got to start communicating with the Squeak group, and,
eventually I got a job at the group at Disney when the luck and twists
of events prevailed. Whenever I witnessed the brilliance of Andreas, I
always thought "Andreas set a precedence of a young guy who ported the
VM could do so many other things brilliantly. He paved the way and let
me sneak in here, when I am no match with him." Also in this sense, "I
would not be myself here today if he was not there."

He was from former East Germany and as far as I know he even did
military service (shorter than normal as benefit of being a smart boy).
I thought I see the remnant of training there occasionally. When five of
us got on to a small car and Andreas got the middle seat, or when we got
on a crowded Shinkansen train, he just could stay still for a long time
without complaining. I imagined that this has something to do with his
training. Thinking about this root, one thing to be said is that "he was
somebody who could transform himself"; he started being not only a smart
guy but added "more depth to his character", stop smoking after a while
in California, and endorse the capitalist ideals when he started a start
up company (actually, companies). Not only that, he became a guy of love
and family! I would imagine that many of us seeing him over time thought
that "is that the same Andreas?" at many times; he was a walking
manifestation of the idea of "being yourself by changing constantly".
(He could argue for something with perfectly logical argument on one
day, then a few days later he could argue against it with equally
perfect logic.)

Yes, he was a person of love and family. I had an opportunity of
attending his wedding 16 months ago. And when Kathleen and he visited us
in California as a part of the honeymoon trip, we cooked together family
foods of Germany and Japan for dinner. During the grocery shopping and
cooking for the dinner, how happy and sweet Andreas looked! They became
"pen pals" of my daughter and they often sent us gifts and letter on
occasions. It really breaks my heart when I think about her (and the baby).

There is a post he made to the Squeak developers mailing list right
after the 9/11 incident. It was a community of thousands from different
countries; so there were some off-topic posts that caused stir. But
Andreas posted a message, which basically said that we need to keep
working on to build a better future:

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2001-September/028173.html

There must be many in the community who had similar lines of thoughts,
but besides the idea itself, the way he clearly articulate the idea and
posted it promptly gave me a very strong and lasting impression. I often
recall that posts now and then.

Unfortunately, we are not going to see such emails from him any more.
But what can we do? We need to press on and try to build a "better future".