This comment [1] has a link to this obituary [2] of Matt. The comment is flagged, probably because the author's other comment is very mean spirited, but the linked obituary is excellent.
Had a handful of interactions with Matt. Probably the last was sometime in the mid- to late-2010s. I essentially started my software development career using software that he was largely responsible for (unknown to me at the time):
These are, in my opinion, some of the best packages in Perl, and there are rarely counterparts that are as good in other languages. Have not found an ORM that is as effortless and featureful as DBIx::Class, for example.
I've read about his tough interactions with other people, and it does seem that, at times, he fell into the classic trap of loving his own ideas too much; but in our interactions (reviewing some of my code on a Perl project), he was really helpful and kind. Also amazingly quick. He read my beginner-level Perl code, instantly understood it, and instantly gave clear, concise feedback.
I used to know him quite well, though not much in a technical context.
He used to wind up taking home every single girl I introduced him to. He and I met when he pulled my FWB at a club and our friendship long outlasted either of ours with the FWB.
He gave me career advice that I followed that set me on a path to the great happiness I now have.
I've met Matt on several occasions, and while he was a challenging character, he was also full of life and ideas, and an inspiration. He was a genius in an old-school, no-compromise way. I have been away from Perl for a long time, but some of my best memories and some of the most intelligent conversations took place while with MST and the rest of that amazing community. Fly high.
Super sad to see this. I worked with Matt around 2004.
Super smart kid, very nice to work with. I ended up supporting one of the systems he built (in Perl). I used his Cataylst Perl framework for some projects after that because of him.
mst is the reason I know some Perl and also managed to get me a Perl group cloak on Liberachat. I will miss him dearly. I've added him to the list of X-Clacks-Overhead responses on my blog.
alt title: Matt Trout (mst) -- prominent Perl developer -- has died aged 42
Matt Trout (mst) was a very big deal in the Perl 5 community, although he was a deeply polarizing figure. He was a big contributor to many Modern Perl projects. I am personally very sad he's dead. I enjoyed the time I spent with him in person, and always found him personally supportive, encouraging, and helpful, although it would be remiss to not mention that a good section of other people found him a very difficult character on many levels.
He was pretty mean to people on irc. If you didn't immediately understand what he said he'd verbally barrage you. Then again the whole perl irc community was pretty toxic.
Yeah, I tried learning Perl back in 2017 and the community was the worst I'd ever encountered. The language had so many bizarre quirks and they just treated you like an absolute idiot if you didn't intuitively get it. Left it behind and never looked back.
No reason to not say it plainly: he was regularly a total dickhead to people asking for help. But, also, he always gave people first-class expert help. They just had to "pay" by taking a bit of verbal abuse.
I spent over a decade in #perl on freenode/libera and saw so many abusive events that I eventually got tired of hanging out there, mostly due to him but in part also due to a handful of others displaying similar behavior. All the same I was always grateful for how tirelessly he spent so much of his personal time providing help, and I'm sad to learn of his passing.
Well yes, he was a total dickhead to people who asked lazy questions and could not answer the follow-up questions that they were asked. He was strict about teaching people that it is important to be able to explain one's problem clearly and follow debugging instructions, and was ruthless with people who didn't get that. On the "help" irc channels we saw a continuous flood of lazy people wanting quick solutions to their coding homework and after a while anyone would become sick of it.
I didn't much enjoy it when I was at the other end of it though, and sometimes he went too far. "Try to understand why the person doesn't understand" wasn't something he did enough -- sometimes the person doesn't know the right questions to ask, they just know that their thing doesn't work.
As a helper, it's hard to find the right balance, and I think the most important thing is that if you're getting emotional about it, step away and let someone else take the question. (I at least have been getting better at this over time.)
Matt was a child prodigy, and child prodigies have it notoriously tough. He and I worked closely for a while. There is someone else important in my life that has somewhat close to mst's intellectual gifts, and similarly to mst they also have difficulty controlling their reaction to other people. However, unlike this other person in my life, mst did know how to express accountability and had been on a learning process to deal with his limitations. Matt and I never had beef, perhaps because we recognised that our respective strengths and weaknesses were complementary.
He would have been happy to tell you himself that he had some rough edges, would speak his mind unvarnished, and would hold strongly onto his own opinions of what he thought was right.
In my life, I've only known one person who has called me a “cunt”.
I'm sure Matt would have been happy to admit that he was that person. I'm sure he would have said that he had spoken his mind unvarnished, and maybe even that he thought he was right.
So what?
People say that a community will fall to the level of the most toxic person it will tolerate. For the Perl community, that was Matt.
Just a quick word of public interest - there are countries where the "c" word is really quite a normal word amongst friends and acquaintances, male and female. When you say that you've only ever been called that once, you maybe don't realise how much cultural information you're revealing. Seriously, look up something about the use of the word in Australia, for example. Your eyes might very well be opened.
I’m an Australian. Being called a cunt is still a really offensive thing to say to someone. You might jokingly call a friend a cunt in jest, but you say that to a stranger and you might have your teeth knocked out.
A comment this extreme could benefit from a source at least, or any sort of explanation of where you're getting it from. When you phrase it as if to make autism sound like an intrinsically negative personality trait, your comment is almost guaranteed to end up flagged/dead. Autism isn't a choice and not all autistic people are assholes.
Matt taught me everything I know about how to make commercial programming creative, engaging, artistic/craftsman type activity, aligned with my desire to keep everything open source to the maximum extent practical.
Another former colleague who is way more talented than I am emailed me privately to express a similar sentiment.
You'll find Matt's indirect influence in things like SQLAlchemy, and chunks of the enduring parts of the javascript ecosystem as well. He was known in the perl community, but his unparalleled thinking skills have a much wider indirect influence
In his bio he has the most succinct and accurate description of Perl that I've ever seen:
> Perl is a wonderful language once you get over the fact that a slightly quirky set of syntax and embedded regular expressions have a tendency to make it look like line noise in the wrong light. Once you're used to it, it's a hell of an expressive dynamically typed language with a huge set of libraries and classes available for it.
It is beyond intellectually dishonest to not put this in context; you've linked elsewhere in this thread to Ovid's obituary, from which I'll quote:
> Third, he wasn’t a bigot. Far from it. He stood up for LGBQT+ rights. He didn’t care about your ethnicity, religion, or national origin. He was accused of philosemitic antisemitism[0], but while he admitted to me that he had hurt someone, he was bewildered by it. He thought he was making a joke; the person hearing it (someone else who I also respect) heard bigotry. For the record, I don’t think Matt was antisemitic, but I realize that this is such an emotionally-charged topic, that some will disagree.
> Shadowcat Systems is an open source software developer and software consultancy provider based in the UK but accustomed to operating worldwide via electronic communications.
> We offer proven expertise in development of networked systems and reliably automating manual processes from business workflow to systems and network management. Shadowcat is committed to Open Source technology and specialises in working with Open Source Software and open standards and protocols. Shadowcat also contributes back to the community with patches, scripts and occasionally full packages.
Jesus fucking Christ. I am so sorry to his friends, family and colleagues at Shadowcat. I don't know that I or so many other people in and around the Perl community would have the life experiences we had without being "voluntold" to do something to, say, take a small part in making a conference happen, or to submit a talk I wouldn't have otherwise done.
His oratory and presentation style is inimitable and he truly brought everyone up who worked with him, and even did his best to smooth over difficult personality conflicts on the p5p mailing list. He was instrumental in establishing a Standard of Conduct for contributing to Perl, as well. He was a staunch ally for the many he befriended and worked to bash through obstacles whether it had anything to do with his immediate obligations or no.
This comment [1] has a link to this obituary [2] of Matt. The comment is flagged, probably because the author's other comment is very mean spirited, but the linked obituary is excellent.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44523887
[2]: https://curtispoe.org/blog/rip-mst.html
Had a handful of interactions with Matt. Probably the last was sometime in the mid- to late-2010s. I essentially started my software development career using software that he was largely responsible for (unknown to me at the time):
These are, in my opinion, some of the best packages in Perl, and there are rarely counterparts that are as good in other languages. Have not found an ORM that is as effortless and featureful as DBIx::Class, for example.I've read about his tough interactions with other people, and it does seem that, at times, he fell into the classic trap of loving his own ideas too much; but in our interactions (reviewing some of my code on a Perl project), he was really helpful and kind. Also amazingly quick. He read my beginner-level Perl code, instantly understood it, and instantly gave clear, concise feedback.
It's a shame he has passed.
This is very sad news.
As I said on irc:
He brought many people into the community, and encouraged their growth (like me)
I popped into the scene by sending a few Moose patches and then coming onto irc displaying an utter lack of understanding of anything
Matt set me straight, and encouraged me to send more patches and I ended up as the manager for Moose
and then inherited the ownership of literally hundreds (perhaps thousands by now) distributions
that work helped me move from being mediocre at my job to being stellar, and enabled me to move on to much better jobs
I used to know him quite well, though not much in a technical context.
He used to wind up taking home every single girl I introduced him to. He and I met when he pulled my FWB at a club and our friendship long outlasted either of ours with the FWB.
He gave me career advice that I followed that set me on a path to the great happiness I now have.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
I've met Matt on several occasions, and while he was a challenging character, he was also full of life and ideas, and an inspiration. He was a genius in an old-school, no-compromise way. I have been away from Perl for a long time, but some of my best memories and some of the most intelligent conversations took place while with MST and the rest of that amazing community. Fly high.
Super sad to see this. I worked with Matt around 2004.
Super smart kid, very nice to work with. I ended up supporting one of the systems he built (in Perl). I used his Cataylst Perl framework for some projects after that because of him.
Last post, just 54 days ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mst
Huge in the Perl world, he will be missed.
He made a few nice replies 41 days ago; found on that same page.
https://trout.me.uk/
mst is the reason I know some Perl and also managed to get me a Perl group cloak on Liberachat. I will miss him dearly. I've added him to the list of X-Clacks-Overhead responses on my blog.
You died way too young, my dear friend!
I use Catalyst quite a lot - have been working on a new thing this morning.
Thanks, Matt, the ripples will go on for a good while.
alt title: Matt Trout (mst) -- prominent Perl developer -- has died aged 42
Matt Trout (mst) was a very big deal in the Perl 5 community, although he was a deeply polarizing figure. He was a big contributor to many Modern Perl projects. I am personally very sad he's dead. I enjoyed the time I spent with him in person, and always found him personally supportive, encouraging, and helpful, although it would be remiss to not mention that a good section of other people found him a very difficult character on many levels.
He wasn't a particularly heavy HN user, but here he is: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mst
For someone not up-to-date with the Perl community, could you elaborate why Matt was considered a deeply polarizing figure, please?
He was pretty mean to people on irc. If you didn't immediately understand what he said he'd verbally barrage you. Then again the whole perl irc community was pretty toxic.
Yeah, I tried learning Perl back in 2017 and the community was the worst I'd ever encountered. The language had so many bizarre quirks and they just treated you like an absolute idiot if you didn't intuitively get it. Left it behind and never looked back.
No reason to not say it plainly: he was regularly a total dickhead to people asking for help. But, also, he always gave people first-class expert help. They just had to "pay" by taking a bit of verbal abuse.
I spent over a decade in #perl on freenode/libera and saw so many abusive events that I eventually got tired of hanging out there, mostly due to him but in part also due to a handful of others displaying similar behavior. All the same I was always grateful for how tirelessly he spent so much of his personal time providing help, and I'm sad to learn of his passing.
Well yes, he was a total dickhead to people who asked lazy questions and could not answer the follow-up questions that they were asked. He was strict about teaching people that it is important to be able to explain one's problem clearly and follow debugging instructions, and was ruthless with people who didn't get that. On the "help" irc channels we saw a continuous flood of lazy people wanting quick solutions to their coding homework and after a while anyone would become sick of it.
I didn't much enjoy it when I was at the other end of it though, and sometimes he went too far. "Try to understand why the person doesn't understand" wasn't something he did enough -- sometimes the person doesn't know the right questions to ask, they just know that their thing doesn't work.
As a helper, it's hard to find the right balance, and I think the most important thing is that if you're getting emotional about it, step away and let someone else take the question. (I at least have been getting better at this over time.)
He "did not suffer fools gladly"
Every time I've heard that phrase used it's just describing an asshole
Matt was a child prodigy, and child prodigies have it notoriously tough. He and I worked closely for a while. There is someone else important in my life that has somewhat close to mst's intellectual gifts, and similarly to mst they also have difficulty controlling their reaction to other people. However, unlike this other person in my life, mst did know how to express accountability and had been on a learning process to deal with his limitations. Matt and I never had beef, perhaps because we recognised that our respective strengths and weaknesses were complementary.
'Child prodigy' is not an exaggeration here: https://trout.me.uk/prec/
You're posting this in a thread filled with stories which paint him as an asshole.
People like him made my life hell. Sad he died, but if he was an arsehole, then he was an arsehole.
He would have been happy to tell you himself that he had some rough edges, would speak his mind unvarnished, and would hold strongly onto his own opinions of what he thought was right.
In my life, I've only known one person who has called me a “cunt”.
I'm sure Matt would have been happy to admit that he was that person. I'm sure he would have said that he had spoken his mind unvarnished, and maybe even that he thought he was right.
So what?
People say that a community will fall to the level of the most toxic person it will tolerate. For the Perl community, that was Matt.
Just a quick word of public interest - there are countries where the "c" word is really quite a normal word amongst friends and acquaintances, male and female. When you say that you've only ever been called that once, you maybe don't realise how much cultural information you're revealing. Seriously, look up something about the use of the word in Australia, for example. Your eyes might very well be opened.
I’m an Australian. Being called a cunt is still a really offensive thing to say to someone. You might jokingly call a friend a cunt in jest, but you say that to a stranger and you might have your teeth knocked out.
Don’t always believe the stereotypes.
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That sounds like half this community. I suspect the issue is what those opinions were.
I did not know him at all, have no opinion on him, and sincerely wish the best for those he left behind.
> the issue is what those opinions were
Rarely, in fact.
[dead]
[flagged]
A comment this extreme could benefit from a source at least, or any sort of explanation of where you're getting it from. When you phrase it as if to make autism sound like an intrinsically negative personality trait, your comment is almost guaranteed to end up flagged/dead. Autism isn't a choice and not all autistic people are assholes.
[dead]
Thanks for all the invaluable teachings about Perl stuff.
RIP mst and thanks for all the fish. DBIx::Class and Catalyst are still a core part of how I pay the bills.
Couldn't we have a one sentence description of what "shadowcat" is? (The main website is also down at the moment.)
Maybe more relevant, Matt was a big deal in the Perl community.
Matt taught me everything I know about how to make commercial programming creative, engaging, artistic/craftsman type activity, aligned with my desire to keep everything open source to the maximum extent practical.
Another former colleague who is way more talented than I am emailed me privately to express a similar sentiment.
You'll find Matt's indirect influence in things like SQLAlchemy, and chunks of the enduring parts of the javascript ecosystem as well. He was known in the perl community, but his unparalleled thinking skills have a much wider indirect influence
In his bio he has the most succinct and accurate description of Perl that I've ever seen:
> Perl is a wonderful language once you get over the fact that a slightly quirky set of syntax and embedded regular expressions have a tendency to make it look like line noise in the wrong light. Once you're used to it, it's a hell of an expressive dynamically typed language with a huge set of libraries and classes available for it.
[flagged]
> due to his anti-semitism
It is beyond intellectually dishonest to not put this in context; you've linked elsewhere in this thread to Ovid's obituary, from which I'll quote:
> Third, he wasn’t a bigot. Far from it. He stood up for LGBQT+ rights. He didn’t care about your ethnicity, religion, or national origin. He was accused of philosemitic antisemitism[0], but while he admitted to me that he had hurt someone, he was bewildered by it. He thought he was making a joke; the person hearing it (someone else who I also respect) heard bigotry. For the record, I don’t think Matt was antisemitic, but I realize that this is such an emotionally-charged topic, that some will disagree.
0: https://www.ajc.org/translatehate/philosemitism
> Shadowcat Systems is an open source software developer and software consultancy provider based in the UK but accustomed to operating worldwide via electronic communications.
> We offer proven expertise in development of networked systems and reliably automating manual processes from business workflow to systems and network management. Shadowcat is committed to Open Source technology and specialises in working with Open Source Software and open standards and protocols. Shadowcat also contributes back to the community with patches, scripts and occasionally full packages.
Jesus fucking Christ. I am so sorry to his friends, family and colleagues at Shadowcat. I don't know that I or so many other people in and around the Perl community would have the life experiences we had without being "voluntold" to do something to, say, take a small part in making a conference happen, or to submit a talk I wouldn't have otherwise done.
His oratory and presentation style is inimitable and he truly brought everyone up who worked with him, and even did his best to smooth over difficult personality conflicts on the p5p mailing list. He was instrumental in establishing a Standard of Conduct for contributing to Perl, as well. He was a staunch ally for the many he befriended and worked to bash through obstacles whether it had anything to do with his immediate obligations or no.
Fucking hell man. This hurts. Love you Matt.
Eh remember him from IRC days
Sad news :(
42 :( it’s way too young - pisses me of when people spend days, months years of our time for their own benefit like it’s nothing
Here is a far more balanced view of the recently deceased. https://curtispoe.org/blog/rip-mst.html
where to vouch? this links to an informed, serious, and thoughful post, unvarnished the way Matt like things
(oh, i see, it already got vouched twixt the main page and my comment)
To answer your question, click on the timestamp of a dead comment if you want to vouch for it. (I think you need some karma level to do this.)
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