[go: up one dir, main page]

|
|
Log in / Subscribe / Register

Mourning Fredrik "Effbot" Lundh

Guido van Rossum has posted the sad news that longtime Python contributor Fredrik Lundh has died.

Fredrik was an early Python contributor (e.g. Elementtree and the 're' module) and his enthusiasm for the language and community were inspiring for all who encountered him or his work. He spent countless hours on comp.lang.python answering questions from newbies and advanced users alike.

He also co-founded an early Python startup, Secret Labs AB, which among other software released an IDE named PythonWorks. Fredrik also created the Python Imaging Library (PIL) which is still THE way to interact with images in Python, now most often through its Pillow fork. His effbot.org site was a valuable resource for generations of Python users, especially its Tkinter documentation.


From:  Guido van Rossum <guido-AT-python.org>
To:  Python-Dev <python-dev-AT-python.org>
Subject:  [Python-Dev] Sad news from Zurich
Date:  Fri, 10 Dec 2021 12:20:27 -0800
Message-ID:  <CAP7+vJLbxJY-SPPzaoT4qnhF9MRkXDuhmr8wxZ=Es1X2ob3gMg@mail.gmail.com>
Cc:  python-committers <python-committers-AT-python.org>
Archive-link:  Article

A former core dev who works at Google just passed the news that Fredrik
Lundh (also known as Effbot) has died.

Fredrik was an early Python contributor (e.g. Elementtree and the 're'
module) and his enthusiasm for the language and community were inspiring
for all who encountered him or his work. He spent countless hours on
comp.lang.python answering questions from newbies and advanced users alike.

He also co-founded an early Python startup, Secret Labs AB, which among
other software released an IDE named PythonWorks. Fredrik also created the
Python Imaging Library (PIL) which is still THE way to interact with images
in Python, now most often through its Pillow fork. His effbot.org site was
a valuable resource for generations of Python users, especially its Tkinter
documentation.

Fredrik's private Facebook page contains the following message from
November 25 by Ylva Larensson (translated from Swedish):

"""

It is with such sorrow and pain that I write this. Fredrik has left us
suddenly.

"""

A core dev wrote: "I felt privileged to be able to study Fredrik's code and
to read his writing. He was a huge asset to our community in the early
days. I enjoyed his sense of humor as well. I'm sad that he passed away."

We will miss him.



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
*Pronouns: he/him **(why is my pronoun here?)*
<http://feministing.com/2015/02/03/how-using-they-as-a-sin...>
_______________________________________________
Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org
To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-leave@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python....
Message archived at
https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.o...
Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/


to post comments

Mourning Fredrik "Effbot" Lundh

Posted Dec 11, 2021 3:36 UTC (Sat) by re:fi.64 (subscriber, #132628) [Link] (3 responses)

Wow, I remember consulting their articles quite a bit when I first started Python.

Mourning Fredrik "Effbot" Lundh

Posted Dec 11, 2021 7:24 UTC (Sat) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, me too, it is a sad news :-(

Mourning Fredrik "Effbot" Lundh

Posted Dec 11, 2021 9:13 UTC (Sat) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] (1 responses)

Doesn't "Effbot" come from his continuous and immediate answers to any question on python-users? People were suspecting (jokingly, of course) the he was some kind of an Eliza for Python.

Really sad news, I profited quite a bit from his support.

Mourning Fredrik "Effbot" Lundh

Posted Dec 12, 2021 19:20 UTC (Sun) by nas (subscriber, #17) [Link]

Yes, in the heyday of comp.lang.python, he was extremely active in terms of answering questions. He was highly knowledge but also patient in explaining basic questions. He also wrote the code for some important parts of Python. E.g. the "re" library, elementtree, part of the Unicode string implementation. He was a master coder.

There was some other bot nicknames: tim-bot for Tim Peters, Martelli bot for Alex Martelli.


Copyright © 2021, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds