Inside SWT

Monday, June 08, 2009

Message from your Emperor - PLEASE READ - ACTION REQUIRED

Well guys, it's been a long fun strange trip. I've had a great time over the years with SWT and Eclipse, but it's time for this Sith Lord to be invading new galaxies.



Over the years working on Eclipse, there have been many high points and a few low ones. Making everyone laugh at JavaOne during the height of the "Swing vs SWT wars" was really fun and helped ease the tension. Around that time, there was a full time blogger or two, FUD'ing and crapping on the toolkit and me personally (it seemed) for daring to make a few operating system calls. Who would have believed that?

The best part of the job was working with everyone at OTI and IBM and meeting all sorts of different people from all over, either in person or through the bug system. Eclipse is a place where (almost) everybody plays and thanks to the Foundation and others in the community, this creates a lot of opportunity. Great work guys!

It's never a good time to leave, but right now is a clean point. We are about to ship Eclipse 3.5 and this is the best time for me to untangle myself from my commitments. Silenio Quarti will be taking over as SWT team lead at IBM and he is one of the greatest engineers I know.

June 12th will be my last day with IBM. I've accepted a position at Bedarra Research Labs. The exact details have yet to be nailed down, but after a short break, I'm looking forward to new engineering challenges.

Best wishes to everyone and thanks,

Steve

P.S. I can be reached as steve_northover confuse a spam bot somewhere near "mail that is hot" should there be an attack on the death star from the rebel base.

32 Comments:

  • You will be missed in more ways than one. Best of luck!

    By Blogger Ed Merks, at 8:25 AM  

  • Time to rename the blog to "Outside SWT" I guess, eh?

    I will miss your sanity.

    By Blogger Patrick Mueller, at 8:27 AM  

  • Maybe you rename it inside Javafx to align with the latest java hype ;)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:37 AM  

  • All the best for the future Steve, hope to still have some beers with you at conferences in the future :-)

    By Blogger Benjamin Pasero, at 8:43 AM  

  • Wow, I can't imagine the old office (or Eclipse) without you Steve... good luck man!

    By Blogger pookzilla, at 9:48 AM  

  • Does this mean you'll start telling us your true feelings now?

    By Blogger Paul VanderLei, at 9:57 AM  

  • All the best, Steve! I firmly believe that you were instrumental in shaking up the entire Swing world. By introducing SWT, you and the rest of the team *forced* Sun to improve their stagnant framework. Now that SWT is beginning to achieve a general level of stability, I can see how you might want to move on to greener pastures.

    Good luck!

    By Blogger Daniel Spiewak, at 10:42 AM  

  • Ack! Shock and dismay. Good luck, and the invitation to come see the rockets and robots at JPL still stands...

    By Blogger Jeff Norris, at 10:43 AM  

  • I assume you are taking your bath-robe with you!

    By Blogger Rick DeNatale, at 10:45 AM  

  • All the best Steve!
    I never knew till the other day I can reach out even the guy who created SWT. And accidentally I bumped into your blog as the SWT newsgroup was not letting me post the query probably because I am not the friend of eclipse :-)! I did not even had time to digest something before posting the query, as I am posting to whom :-). But, all the best. It's wonderful how you say this is the blog of father of SWT and this is the message from the Emperor!
    All the best for all your future endeavors. Hope to see more articles on the secrets :-) of SWT from you, if you have any plans of continuing SWT/Eclipse/to that matter any kind of evangelism. :-).

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:47 AM  

  • Good to see that you are not joining one of the other dark forces... good luck, Steve, and keep in touch!

    By Blogger Boris Bokowski, at 11:07 AM  

  • Good luck, Steve. Your skills will be dearly missed in the Eclipse universe.

    By Anonymous Andrew Overholt, at 11:41 AM  

  • Good luck Steve! You accomplished so much! I appreciated your smarts, humor and no-bullshit-honesty. Eclipse and IBM will miss you!

    By Blogger Unknown, at 12:06 PM  

  • The true meaning of the S in SWT has always been assumed to be "Steve's" but but now we all know, it's

    Sith-WT

    Best of luck Steve

    By Blogger John Duimovich, at 12:07 PM  

  • Steve,

    I wish you well on your future endeavors. Your no-nonsense attitude to both the technical and non-technical aspects of your work with eclipse (especially the Mac ports!) has been a beacon of sanity in an otherwise crazy world.

    All the best,

    Alex

    By Blogger AlBlue, at 2:02 PM  

  • Good luck Steve!

    Now with you leaving, our curmudgeon to developer ratio is lower ;(

    By Blogger Chris Aniszczyk (zx), at 2:28 PM  

  • Thanks for being a great SWT communicator and bugzilla responder, the community has appreciated it, and SWT is all the better for it!

    I think your shoes are gonna be hard to fill...

    All the best!

    By Blogger JamesB, at 3:19 PM  

  • Hi Steve, good luck with the new position...

    Change is necessary, for *all* of us in the high tech. Controlling it is even better,

    Keep in touch.

    By Blogger Ludovic Champenois, at 3:55 PM  

  • Good luck Steve! You're wisdom and humour will be missed!

    By Blogger Kim Moir, at 4:29 PM  

  • Good Luck, Steve!

    Let's keep the "boat load o' code" to a minimum in the new digs, shall we?

    By Blogger dwd, at 4:47 PM  

  • SWT is one very impressive platform - I am so glad I chose it over Swing 4 years ago when I started writing our accounting software. Thanks and good luck!

    By Anonymous Mark McLaren, at 6:43 PM  

  • Wish you all the best!

    By Blogger KetanPadegaonkar, at 10:54 PM  

  • Wow. One more great guy leaving the Eclipse space.

    By Blogger Tom, at 4:39 AM  

  • Hi Steve, Thank you for all the great work! May the lightsaber be with you when it makes the SWooT sound.

    By Blogger wimjongman, at 5:27 AM  

  • Maybe now you'll have time to write Volume 2!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:46 AM  

  • Will miss you. Please keep in touch. And good luck!

    By Anonymous Bill Higgins, at 9:25 PM  

  • I was thinking of starting a "Friends of Steve" campaign which might ensure continuing services such as:

    -Providing more bandwidth for Steve
    -Purchasing additional servers to host Steve
    -Sending students to be coached by Steve
    -Sponsoring Steve community events

    Act now and you could receive free Cheese, Rotting Sash, Weed-gets and a slice of layer-cake.

    I remember my first day with Steve, January 1992. "Hey do you know anything about OS/2 graphics". "hmm, no" replies Ken. "Well you will soon"

    By Blogger Ken Walker, at 10:49 PM  

  • Sorry to see you go Steve, but all the best in your future endeavor. You put a big mark on SWT/Eclipse :)

    By Blogger Unknown, at 6:02 AM  

  • Good luck Steve in the future. Your knowledge and your presentations where always outstanding.

    I will certainly miss that.

    By Blogger Christian Campo, at 12:04 PM  

  • Ata boy.

    By Anonymous Jeff McAffer, at 8:48 PM  

  • Best of luck in your new gig, and thanks for making SWT. Really, thanks!

    By Blogger Francis, at 2:54 AM  

  • Have fun - see you some time in Ottawa!

    By Blogger Unknown, at 6:06 AM  

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