FONUS

FONUS

What? Oh no. I searched for Håkan's website because it was down and found this memorial. I am crying. He was the very best of the best and one of the very top smartest programmers I ever knew. Easily in the top 3 of all the programmers I have ever known on the planet. And the other top two didn't know anything about what he knew. He was just incomprehensibly smart, and good at learning everything. For the people who knew him but didn't know how to gauge him: I hope you understand that he was an incredibly rare genius that devoured and extended programming paradigms more completely than anyone I have ever known. He learned new programming ideas and helped people improve them willingly and helpfully. His website was a tour de force of mastering and programming in at least 70 programming languages. And he was the kindest and most helpful person you can imagine. He taught me so much about many arcane programming fields including constraint programming, in which he was decidedly one of the world's experts. If you asked him a question, he would not only answer the question, but deliver to you the deep understanding that would make you smarter. I truly loved him. He was so good to talk to. He always made me better. He made my mind grow. He made the world better with his tools like Picat, which are works of amazing genius that most of us are not even able to comprehend fully. I consider myself a somewhat talented programmer, but I was absolutely in awe of his abilities. I don't even come close. The things he built were crystalline and perfect and tricky and smart and made you smarter. We used to play programming challenges like Advent of Code together. He disappeared after December 3 of this year but I thought he just had better things going on. His solutions to most of the problems were the most amazing, succinct, efficient wizardry and they were things of beauty that would solve in milliseconds what my programs would take hours to solve.. Often they were written in a programming language that he built himself, which is even more impressive. I hope that those of us who knew him and loved him will try to preserve his website and his works. The website archive dot org has them but we need to preserve them forever in a better place. Please look me up by my name above and contact me if you're able to help preserve his legacy. (I think I'm the only one with my name spelled this way.) The world has lost a great genius. He was gone too soon. I was looking forward to talking to him some more, and I am absolutely destroyed by his loss. I will forever miss my friend and guru to whom I could always ask the toughest questions, and get a better answer than I could hope for. I was proud and flattered that he spent his time to teach me. I hope he is in the highest heaven and happily learning God's algorithms, and helping Him (with a capital H) make those algorithms run much more efficiently. I have no doubt that God is saying "wow, that's an elegant trick" and thinking deeper about it, and discussing how they would implement it. Håkan was that good.

Vi saknar dig Håkan. Jag och du hade ett långt uppehåll i kontakten men vi återupptog den som om inga år hade gått. Du var alltid positiv, aldrig arg och vi hade alltid givande samtal om musik, litteratur, film och vänskap. Du har alltid varit en fin vän som från tidiga år imponerat på mig med din förmåga att visa intresse för många olika saker i livet och kort tid efter att ditt intresse väckts var du expert på områden som var vitt skilda. Exempel: Att lära sig spela bas. Frank Zappa, TV serien vänner, Kendo etc etc. Du frågade mig när vi var unga...läser du böcker? Det är väl lite dåligt med det...Om du bara ska läsa en bok, läs denna: Gåvornas Natt av Borges. Den natten sov jag inte...bara läste! Vi saknar dig Håkan, och du blev även expert på data-programmering och som jag förstått en världsdignitet på området med din speciella intelligens och bakgrund inom filosofi och matematik. Jag, Pelle, Thomas och Staffan saknar dig.  

Vad ska jag nu göra med tiden som annars var vikt för våra samtal....jo minnas alla fina och intressanta stunder vi ändå fick tillsammans. Sov gott där bortom stjärnorna Håkan.

I am very sad to hear that Håkan is gone. He was a thoughtful person with great curiosity and patience. His friendship is sorely missed.

HÅKAN JAG SAKNAR DIG VÄLDIGT MYCKET VI SKKULLE JU TRÄFFAS I APRIL I LUND NÄR VI TRÄFFAS I GRRUPPEN SKA VI TÄNDA ETT LJUSFÖR DIG

I am deeply saddened to hear Håkan's passing. Håkan, a dedicated professional software engineer, played an important role in shaping the Picat language and system from its earliest days. He wrote more than a thousand Picat programs, and contributed countless suggestions and bug reports. He also co-authored several publications on Picat, including the book "Constraint Solving and Planning with Picat". In addition, he generously provided timely and thoughtful responses to questions on the newsgroup. His passing is a tremendous loss to the Picat community, and he will be remembered for his contributions, generosity, and passion.

Tack för alla samtal, Håkan! Alltid med nya infallsvinklar och dimensioner. Vila i frid.