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Original Post: John Vlissides
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John Vilissides, one of the 'Gang-of-Four' authours of the 'Design Patterns' book has, unfortunately, passed away.
I would usually leave commentary on such great people to others(more here), but I have a small personal story to share.
I took one of John's patterns-oriented workshops at OOPSLA 2004. The talk was mostly similar to the 'Pattern Hatching' book, which I was somewhat familiar with. Audience consisted largely of design patterns newbies, and not many questions were asked, exept by the ever-talkative yours truly.
After the class I saw John in the hallway. He saw me, walked over and thanked ME for the questions. What a guy! (After that we had a nice conversation of applicability of patterns in dynamic languages)
"I have learned much from my teachers, more from my collegues and the most from my students" (the Talmud, somewhere).
John was a true humble human being and a true scholar. Gang of four is no more.