I guess he was a year older than I. Played basketball a lot, just like his dad (who used to be in the city's dream team in his time). After that he got fat, got married, divorced, re-married. I once stumbled upon his first wife - well she's three times the chick, compared with the second. But mrs mom preferred the latter.
Worked at erc of the kombinat for several years, where he became a sort of local legend, and achieved seniority rather early.
Then in, IIRC, 1990 or 1991 he moved to DBA, got rid of working in Cobol and fell in love with coding in Fox. For months he behaved like a kid in a cakeshop - all the things he wanted to have are now his to take.
He drank sweet coffee. Extremely sweet, and cold. I once accidentally drank of his coffee and went off to rinse my mouth, then again to rinse my mustache. We printed a skull and bones on a circular piece of cardboard, and he would cover his cup with it, so it wouldn't pick any dust while it cools, and would ward off anyone who'd think of taking it. When the next coffee arrived, he'd just move this lid to it, and start drinking the first one.
Wasn't the only thing he drank. He and Sale stuck to the "we can't have breakfast on an empty stomach" axiom. He died somewhere around end of july 2002.
Perhaps the most famous programming joke from my collection is actually something that happened with him, while he was in erc. Their scheme was that the customers bring their data (on cassettes), then they process them (whatever that was) and print the reports from them. The printouts were left at auntie Ema, probably the coffee cook, to be picked up the next day when they come with fresh cassettes.
One day a young colleague came to him with some problem, and while he elaborated on what he was doing and where he ran into trouble, said „and then there's no way to do that... well, unless... now, huh, why not, that would work... and after that it becomes easy... Thanks!“. „Thanks for what? I didn't say a word. You could have talked with auntie Ema all the same“.
This is how the auntie Ema principle came to be, when a programmer pushes the problem through a different medium, be it talking to someone or writing on a forum, whatever makes him take a different street in his head, and then sees it differently while explaining it, and sees the solution too. A link to this anecdote was in my signature on UA for months, and almost everyone I worked with knew it, sooner or later. It even happened that someone would deliberately call me and say „I need auntie Ema“.
„A car, while it warms up, a liter is gone. A man, while a liter goes away, warms up“
13-XI-2019 - 16-IV-2026