
David Tilbrook passed away in the night yesterday. COVID-19, dammit. David had given a couple of talks at GTALUG. 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. 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.

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.
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/lis tinfo/talk
-- Russell

Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
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.
Requiscat in pace.
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.
At a long-ago TLUG meeting, the arranged speaker was a no-show but then in walked David with his laptop slung over a shoulder, and Drew asked if he had a talk he could give. A few moments later with the projector hooked up, he selected the slides from a talk he had given 20 years previously on making software portable between Unix and VMS. He pointed out that if you crossed out Unix and wrote in Linux, and likewise VMS became NT, then absolutely nothing had changed and the talk was still fresh when he delivered it that evening. I also have to remember a post-meeting beer gathering one summer evening just after Edsger W Dijkstra had passed and David was recounting good times they'd spent together. -- Anthony de Boer

On 2021-01-16 1:27 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
David Tilbrook passed away in the night yesterday. COVID-19, dammit.
David had given a couple of talks at GTALUG.
Russel Crook and I worked with him at Siemens Electric, just before he made QEF an independent company. I still have a copy of his Software Hygene talk. He was brilliant, idiosyncratic and fun. --dave -- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain

oh wow. I am truly profoundly sorry, for you and for his family. to be sure he created a bit of immortality through his work, but that is little comfort in this moment. Karen On Sat, 16 Jan 2021, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
David Tilbrook passed away in the night yesterday. COVID-19, dammit.
David had given a couple of talks at GTALUG.
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.
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. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
participants (5)
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Anthony de Boer
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D. Hugh Redelmeier
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David Collier-Brown
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Karen Lewellen
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Russell Reiter