In Memory of a Great Developer

Today, my beloved wife Linda passed away after a long struggle with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).

This is of course a software development blog, so I thought it would be appropriate to quote a post I made a couple of weeks ago to a local newsgroup in response to the following question:

Would anyone have suggestions on quizzing applicants on their coding skills? Java, C#, .NET, etc. …

My response:

Absolutely. Have your best developers interview them.

Great developer talent is identified, not by the Sack o’Skills ™ that they bring to the table, nor by the arcana they have memorized, nor by their ability to answer bullshit quizzes about irrelevant stuff. They are identified by their innate skills at identifying and solving problems, their mature judgment about trade-offs, their passion for great code, their ability to learn new skills quickly, etc.

It’s a plus if they have specific experience with the exact tools and problem domain you want them to work on, but considering the breadth of the technological landscape plus the speed with which it changes, that’s just not likely, and it’s not the best place to focus your attention.

As an example, my wife was an insanely great developer. She has been disabled for the past 25 years. Were she to be miraculously made well, I would kill to work with her, and her stale 1980’s skill set would not matter a whit because trust me, she’d be walking all over your run-of-the-mill developers inside of three months. That’s because she’s that smart and that insightful and that passionate. And back in the day she did it all without today’s IDE’s, interactive debuggers, contextual help and code generators, too.

No one knows a great developer like another great developer. No one picks ’em worse (or goes about it more bass-ackwards) than non-technical managers or HR personnel.

Most of us, myself included, close down when we feel like crap. Linda, like the Energizer Bunny, just kept going and going. And it was not because she was one of those annoying oblivious people who are just always bubbly and full of sunshine. She was realistic and grounded and pragmatic … but she loved life itself with an intensity I’ve never seen anywhere else.

It started 31 years ago with an incredibly bad flu that would not go away and lasted for six months … followed by a few weeks of recovery, a few weeks of crashing … and then a drop in her IQ down to102. She had a career she loved, as a systems analyst for the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo, MI, and she was forced to give it up.

So, for the first of many times, she re-invented herself. She bred, raised and showed several champion Shetland Sheepdogs. One of them, Christopher, graces the cover of one of the popular books on the breed to this day. She bought a farm and branched out into Shetland Sheep, becoming one of the first to import them to the U.S. She founded the North American Shetland Sheep Association and edited its newsletter for many years using the fledgling desktop publishing technology. She did all of this in between raging fevers and other fun symptoms.

Failing health and personal circumstances forced her to give up her beloved farm, and that’s when we met. We had many good years together, including travel to places like London, Kauai, and Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. She would “push through” for a few fun days, and pay for it with weeks of suffering, mostly bed-bound. But it was worth the price to her, to experience life.

In her final seven years Linda’s health deteriorated and her life was reduced to a pinprick of its former self. It was a life that most people would consider not worth living, but no one was better than Linda at squeezing blood out of a turnip. She rejoiced in the birds that visited our back yard here in the desert at the edge of Phoenix. She gave them names and saw that they were fed. When she couldn’t feed them any more she saw to it that I fed them.

At the end she could barely read and write, but she spent hours in front of the computer to write one email to to a friend or relative. She stayed engaged, and hopeful. There was not a single person who truly knew her and did not love her. Many were in awe of her.

I was immeasurably blessed to share her life and love these past thirteen years. Rest in peace, Linda. I will miss you more than I can possibly describe.

And yes, I’m feeding those birds.

Linda Grommes

Dec 1, 1952 – Aug 1, 2007