Over the weekend we lost another long-standing member of the Domino community, Nathan T Freeman. Nathan was outgoing, often controversial, but passionate about open source and helping others. Everyone who met him will have stories about him. But I know he is one of the individuals I have to thank for being where I am today.
Back in 2011 I took two weeks holiday to learn Java in XPages. Ease of troubleshooting has always been a key concern of mine for the applications I build. So one of the parts of the project was to take Julian Robichaux’s OpenLog Java Script Library and convert it to Java for XPages. My first pass sort of worked, but Nathan took my Java class and cleaned it up quite a bit. That is why he is credited on the project. He also helped with my fledgling Java skills through that project, answering questions very promptly, like how a NotesDatabase object could be null and still give a filePath property.
When Nathan left GBS and set up RedPill, I welcomed the opportunity to get involved in OpenNTF Domino API. It was Nathan who tasked me with adding logging to ODA, something I wasn’t sure I could do, but achieved it anyway. Over the years, our discussions and my work on ODA taught me a lot about how Domino works under the hood, knowledge that will be used over the coming years. But we also shared many good times at events around the world. Everyone knew when Nathan was in the room. Over the last couple of years I’ve missed his presence at those community events. I thought there was always a chance we would see him again, as Domino developed. Alas, no more.
R.I.P. Nathan.