[1]: https://github.com/mikeal/cancer-diaries/pulls?q=is%3Apr
I hope others were able to be delighted by spending time with him, as I was.
maybe someone else who gets the inside joke will built a naanument to him.
PouchDB was way ahead of its time, and I'm just now coming around to how crazy cool it was and is compared to most other tech in its space.
He made a great deal of positive impact on technical areas I care about. Rest in peace.
Everything worked fine, and was cool to launch something like that since I'm not a mobile developer by any measure. But PouchDB required using CouchDB for the syncing, which was both the first document DB we deployed in our production infrastructure, and the only use case for having CouchDB at all, so we didn't have lots of expertise about it.
I think managing CouchDB ended up being the biggest maintenance hassle at one point, as it was kind of an extra piece, compared to the "real" setup that hosted the other production data. AFAIK, there was no experts on CouchDB at the company either.
So I guess in the end if this "frontend sync library" you're want to use also ends up dictating the backend storage/engine, then make sure you can "afford" a completely new and standalone piece for just that. Unless you're already using CouchDB, then it seems like a no-brainer.
Probably today I'd cobble together something "manually" with Postgres and WebSockets/SSE instead if I was looking to do the same thing again.
Just now, almost a decade later, we get libraries like Tinybase and SignalDB.
Reading about his cancer last year was difficult, not so much for him directly; he seemed to have made peace with it (that's the impression I got anyway). But it's a reminder of my own mortality, and I know I would not react or continue on the way he did. That's difficult to acknowledge.
I was a camp counselor at node camp three years in a row. He created such a magical experience that I cried when I got home, I wanted to live in nodecamp forever. I still do.
Seeing some of the folks posting in here makes it hurt worse. I have so many memories, like I remember all of us riding the bus back and forth to the camp, so much laughter and fucking around. Hanging at each others houses, going to meetups, and just being part of something special. Talking shit thru pull requests. Late night dorking around on meatspac.es etc etc etc I could go on for days.
Thank you Mikeal for all the good times.
We let several years pass before reconnecting two years ago this month. We sat at the alameda yacht club for hours discussing family, fatherhood, career, and sutras, his passion was as addictive as it had always been.
With a newborn, he had every reason to avoid meeting, but his nature was giving. By the end we had affirmed our friendship and my heart was calm. We agreed to meet again. My belief is that some day we will.
I love you Mikeal and I will miss you dearly.
I'm sorry to hear of his passing.
The more time I spent with Mikael the more I saw him doing all the small things that needed doing for a community, or an event. Even just hanging out Mikael was always so considerate and tried to make things special for everyone.
He will be missed.
I really enjoyed time I spent with him and appreciated his kindness and leadership in the community. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.
I never met him IRL, but you form a one way relationship with people you look up to online and Mikeal is one of the people for me. May he rest easy.
What a creative soul. Thank you Mikeal.
Sad in a way on the same day this is posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44241549 (which for me is super inspiring). Mikeal would've done so much with the stronger and stronger AI out there (though perhaps questioning it of course in his own way). His cancer diaries was just one example of how he couldn't help always being a leader in what he did.
Everyone that sends an HTTP request in Node uses Mikeal’s work: firstly he wrote the first NPM module to handle HTTP requests and then he worked tirelessly to ensure that module was never needed and high-level excellent HTTP support was built into node JS itself.
Mikeal also worked on freeing node.js from Joyent via the iojs fork, and ran node events way before it was commercially viable to do so.
He loved and did so much for his family, and for the JS community as well.
I am so sad and honestly, angry that he was taken from us so young. He would have done so much more. But also, he certainly did enough. I hope he felt good in the end about how he spent his time.
Rest in peace, Mikeal.
Fuck cancer.
I first met him in person at playnode.io 2012 in Korea. Despite the language barrier, he patiently listened to my broken English and took the time to answer with kindness and sincerity. That was my first impression of him — and it stayed with me.
He taught not just through code, but through the way he treated others.
Rest in peace.
When we worked together, Anna and Mikeal were not yet parents and we were all a lot younger. He is a humble, beautiful human being. I know his spirit will live on with his children. I just don’t know what to say other than sending my love to his family and #CancerSucks
He possessed a unique and brilliant intellect paired with a compassionate and generous spirit. His interpretation of Buddhist sutras and other sacred writings through an engineer's lens was insightful and inspiring—the foundation for many great conversations. I had just moved back to the Bay Area around the time of his diagnosis and was looking forward to reconnecting in person. Things happened so fast. Sending love to his family.
He wrote a lot of opensource projects and was a refreshingly nice and patient person to interact with on GitHub. Condolences to his friends and family, he’ll be missed in the FOSS world
outside1234•1d ago