So often in life, it takes a sad and tragic event to unite people. Nothing does this more than the loss of a friend. Recently, a co-worker of mine named Bob Hug has past way. He had a heart attack while riding his bicycle home from work. His manner of death was sad and tragic. However, let make no mistake about it, there is nothing sad and tragic about our friend Bob. I decided to write this tribute to Bob, not to focus on the unhappy moments in his life, but rather the joy and passion that he expressed to us all everyday. I only knew Bob for about 9 months, but working closely with him everyday gained me enough knowledge to feel I truly knew him. Inside the office, Bob was our resident MS SQL Reporting guru. He really had mastered this technology. There were no questions or issues with reporting that Bob could not solve.
He was a quite individual, but had no problems expressing how he felt too the people that knew him on any given day. I think that he enjoyed expressing himself most by the choice of whichever colorful T-shirt that he would wear to work that day. Most days it would be a typical all black shirts with some expression written across it that I just didn’t get. The expressions would often change based on his mood. One particular shirt I remember him wearing had the Intel logo on it with the wording “Geek Inside” instead of “Intel Inside”. I think he was trying to say that he was a geek and proud of it. As of lately, his t-shirts were all different variations on types of adverting for the Tour d’France. He loved cycling. Over the last few weeks he was so excite about the current running of the Tour d’France. He couldn’t wait to update us all on the current status of the race; even thou I had no idea what he was taking about I would try to listen.
As far as I knew of his home life, he was really into working around the house. He loved to work on his cactus garden. I remember him telling me how excited he was when he found some special cactus that grew even in the cold winter. I wish I could remember some more about various conversations that we had, but unfortunately these details have since faded away.
During the announcement of Bob’s death at our company, our department head Gene, had brought to light an old American Indian believe. “To speak the name of the dead, is to bring them back to life.” Perhaps with this tribute to Bob flowing throughout the Internet, he’ll be able to live on better in our memories. Although his journey though life has ended, he has most definately moved on to a better place and found true salvation.
God bless you Bob. You will be missed
Posted by gcorbin
Summer Reading List
July 9, 2007I’ve been spending a bit of time lately catching up on a lot of reading. I’ve been diving into a pile of books and articles that supposedly all software engineers read. Some of the topics are common sense and others are eye opening. The list of topics range from high level overviews on software engineering to very specific technical manuals. The techie books have always been great for learning new technology. I find that the most enjoyable part of the tech books is when you can take what you’ve learned there and apply it into some real code. It doesn’t matter if its sample code that I’m working on or an actual production level product, either way learning a new technology is fun.
The books and articles that focus on software engineering in general are great to read also. I really enjoy the high level picture of how things should work. I find it very refreshing to know that so many software engineers have similar issues when it comes to attempting to create that perfect masterpiece. However, the most frustrating aspect of these books is when you try to put to practice what you’ve read. It turns out to be much easier to try out a new technology than it is to use a new programming technique or methodology. All these books offer ideas on how to create ideal software and what’s the mark of a good software engineer, but very few of them provide any information of how to truly measure it. Without know that, how can you possibly determine if any change is needed. In any case, I find all these books to be real page-turners and I can’t wait to get a few minutes to sit down and start that next chapter. I would recommend all these items to every inspiring software engineer. If you’re interesting in my current book list, you can find it below. Give a few of these a try and see how you feel about them.
Book List (in no particular order)
1. Dreaming in Code (Scott Rosenberg)
2. The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt and David Thomas)
3. The Mythical Man-Month (Fred Brooks)
4. The Cathedral and the Bazaar (Eric Raymond)
5. No Silver Bullet - essence and accidents of software engineering (Fred Brooks)
6. Software Aspects of Strategic Defense Systems (David Parnas)
7. Software Design Manifesto (Mitch Kapor)
8. Essential Windows Presentation Foundation (Chris Anderson)
9. Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)
10. Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (Steve McConnell)
11. Code Complete, Second Edition (Steve McConnell)
12. Microserfs (Douglas Coupland)
13. Peopleware (Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister)
14. The singularity is near : when humans transcend biology (Ray Kurzweil)
15. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Robert Pirsig)