Blog post submitted by Bob Payne, VP of Enterprise Consulting, reflects on the legacy of Jim Weirich.
This past February the Agile and Ruby communities lost a very influential member. Jim Weirich died on February 19th. Jim was involved in the creation of many things that the ruby community now takes for granted; Rake, RubyGems. Github honored him with a special message for his last commit on the [Wyricki project].
Unfortunately I only met Jim one time. However, I do have a podcast as a memento of that meeting. Back in 2007 I spoke with Jim at the RailsEdge and wrote the following intro to my podcast. You can listen to the podcast at AgileToolKit.
Here is a short excerpt from the interview:
“I spoke with Jim after his Rake Talk at the RailsEdge. If this is not your favorite build tool now it will be. Jim is the creator of Rake and the RubyGems package management for Ruby. These two tools have made my life a lot easier and if you have not used them, then you are probably not using. Jim talks about using Rake and db migrations with a recent java project.
I also spoke with Jim about ruby test driven development. It was great to see someone do tiny step TDD in a presentation that was not an eXtreme Programming demonstration.
Jim is the first of my guests to say “You’re the AgileToolkit Guy…I listen to the podcast!” or something to that effect. Thanks for the interview and for listening to my podcast Jim.”
There is now a scholarship fund set up in Jim’s name for computer science students. With this fund we can help carry on the legacy of teaching that Jim showed in his lifetime. More information about the fund can be found here:
The Weirich Fund
