On Saturday, 16 January 2021, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
David Tilbrook passed away in the night yesterday. COVID-19, dammit.
David had given a couple of talks at GTALUG.
I attended one of those talks where he introduced his QEF toolset and software hygiene concepts. Quod Erat Faciendum, with the metaphorical subtext, washing behind your ears.
He was a long-time UNIX guy. We did CS degrees at the same time at the University of Toronto. He was an official member of DGP (I was only a guest) where (and when) the first U of T UNIX system was installed.
We and Rob Pike worked on text editors (ed, qed), among other things.
You know when a GUI interface changes the cursor symbol to indicate that the system is busy? He invented that.
He was one of the founders of HCR, a Toronto UNIX software house.
He did a lot of interesting things, knew a lot of interesting people, and had a lot of interesting stories. He has a good family too.
He was a fun and engaging speaker, with publications like, "A Dialectic on Software Autocracy and Anarchy and the History of Unix and Vodka" preserved on his QEF Software INC site. I had this bookmarked at one time but QEF.com is now non responsive, there is an outline of QEF here. https://stellar.cleanscape.net/stdprod/qef/qefwhite/00_abstract.htm <https://stellar.cleanscape.net/stdprod/qef/qefwhite/00_abstract.html&ved=2ahUKEwiclJ6NpKDuAhXYHM0KHXu8AIMQFjABegQIBxAC&usg=AOvVaw3yCGBDN8f7li-3xX1jfn8X&cshid=1610794821685> l I do a fair bit of reading on different aspects of technology and I found David's style of mind-mapping relationships, within the context of office/software automation, quite interesting. I almost posted QEF info on, o1bigtenors thread about culling out redundancies in time and process management. The only conversation I ever had with David was brief and about tex foils and tcl/tk because I was writing a gif browser at the time, but I did go back to his site quite a few times when I was thinking about perspectives and I was looking to change how I was abstracting them. The wayback machine has the site and a list of publications. https://web.archive.org/web/20200111123852/http://qef.com/
I miss him. In fact, I've missed him for a year -- we were planning to visit when COVID showed up. "We" included Christopher Browne, now also passed..
These are sad days indeed.
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-- Russell