[GTALUG] David Tilbrook

[Russell Reiter]

On Saturday, 16 January 2021, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk at 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
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