[HN Gopher] Mikeal Rogers has died
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Mikeal Rogers has died
Author : neom
Score : 313 points
Date : 2025-06-10 13:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (b.h4x.zip)
(TXT) w3m dump (b.h4x.zip)
| outside1234 wrote:
| Cancer sucks. I met Mikeal at a node.js conference probably ten
| years ago and we had a spirited argument. While I didn't agree
| with him, he galvanized my thinking about what needed to change,
| and we need more people like that in the world.
| skeptrune wrote:
| I never met Mikeal, but was still touched second-hand by the
| lovely messages on the cancer-diaries repository he opened up[1].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/mikeal/cancer-diaries/pulls?q=is%3Apr
| jonchurch_ wrote:
| Sad to hear this but even happier now about the existence of the
| Node.js documentary[0]. Glad this happened and that some of his
| stories of Node's early days are recorded.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/LB8KwiiUGy0?t=705
| jerrysievert wrote:
| oh gosh, I have so many great memories of Mikeal due to the
| wonderful javascript community, and am really sad to hear he has
| passed.
|
| I hope others were able to be delighted by spending time with
| him, as I was.
|
| maybe someone else who gets the inside joke will built a
| naanument to him.
| meandave wrote:
| Mikeal was extremely welcoming to me when I met him over a decade
| ago, It was either JSConf or NodeCamp, He was always super
| insightful and encouraging to my personal growth as an engineer
| and open source contributor. NodeJS wouldn't be what it is
| without him, especially the community around it in the early
| days. I got to work with him for a bit at protocol labs. This is
| a major loss to open source
| cdata wrote:
| I had the pleasure of meeting Mikeal on a few occasions, but
| mainly I've benefited from his work over the years (initially via
| the JavaScript ecosystem, and later through the Protocol Labs
| community).
|
| PouchDB was way ahead of its time, and I'm just now coming around
| to how crazy cool it was and is compared to most other tech in
| its space.
|
| He made a great deal of positive impact on technical areas I care
| about. Rest in peace.
| swyx wrote:
| just learning about pouchdb now. why did it not take off you
| think?
| diggan wrote:
| Around 2016 sometimes, a small team (me included) built a
| "mini" version of our main product (Typeform) which was using
| PouchDB for syncing forms/answers between the backend and the
| mobile app (written with Phonegap/Cordova if I remember
| correctly), mainly so we could have offline capabilities.
|
| Everything worked fine, and was cool to launch something like
| that since I'm not a mobile developer by any measure. But
| PouchDB required using CouchDB for the syncing, which was
| both the first document DB we deployed in our production
| infrastructure, and the only use case for having CouchDB at
| all, so we didn't have lots of expertise about it.
|
| I think managing CouchDB ended up being the biggest
| maintenance hassle at one point, as it was kind of an extra
| piece, compared to the "real" setup that hosted the other
| production data. AFAIK, there was no experts on CouchDB at
| the company either.
|
| So I guess in the end if this "frontend sync library" you're
| want to use also ends up dictating the backend
| storage/engine, then make sure you can "afford" a completely
| new and standalone piece for just that. Unless you're already
| using CouchDB, then it seems like a no-brainer.
|
| Probably today I'd cobble together something "manually" with
| Postgres and WebSockets/SSE instead if I was looking to do
| the same thing again.
| k__ wrote:
| I remember 2017, at offline camp, I proposed talking about
| using offline first libraries with existing backends.
| Nobody, was interested. Seems the people interested in such
| tech were pretty much sold on CouchDB.
|
| Just now, almost a decade later, we get libraries like
| Tinybase and SignalDB.
| neom wrote:
| In addition to the sync issues mentioned, personally I think
| overcoming the browsers was the real issues. Nobody wanted to
| support this, the security would have been a contrived
| nightmare.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Even when you know it's coming, it's hard to process. Met Mikeal
| at oscon in ... 2007 I think, where he was presenting windmill as
| a testing tool for js/ajax. We kept in touch for a few years, and
| he was kind enough to meet up with me during some travel time in
| California the following year. He took great joy in introducing
| me to some tapas place I can't remember now, but I do remember
| the excitement he had just... telling me about it. That low key
| passion (tech, food, anything else) is one of the things I still
| remember about the few times we met in person.
|
| Reading about his cancer last year was difficult, not so much for
| him directly; he seemed to have made peace with it (that's the
| impression I got anyway). But it's a reminder of my own
| mortality, and I know I would not react or continue on the way he
| did. That's difficult to acknowledge.
| unwiredben wrote:
| I got to hang with him a little in the early 2010s when I was
| doing JavaScript work and found him nice and personable. I'm so
| sorry for his early passing.
| peterbraden wrote:
| Shit, never expected to see an announcement that a friend had
| died through HN. Learned a lot from you Mikeal, you will be
| missed.
| s5fs wrote:
| Mikeal was instrumental in helping me get established in the node
| community when it was super tiny. Being around him was a joy! He
| made those around him feel part of something special. He made me
| feel like I belonged.
|
| I was a camp counselor at node camp three years in a row. He
| created such a magical experience that I cried when I got home, I
| wanted to live in nodecamp forever. I still do.
|
| Seeing some of the folks posting in here makes it hurt worse. I
| have so many memories, like I remember all of us riding the bus
| back and forth to the camp, so much laughter and fucking around.
| Hanging at each others houses, going to meetups, and just being
| part of something special. Talking shit thru pull requests. Late
| night dorking around on meatspac.es etc etc etc I could go on for
| days.
|
| Thank you Mikeal for all the good times.
| duluca wrote:
| RIP Mikeal, those early NodeConf adventures were life-changing to
| me, ripped me out of my entrenched MSFT tech life, and got me on
| a Mac. It's thanks to these events I was able make meaningful
| contributions to OSS, ultimately ended up giving dozens of talks,
| publishing books, and have fulfilling career. Without him my life
| looks very different.
| stevelacy wrote:
| Mikeal used to organize bicycle + coffee meetups in SF many years
| ago, and was very welcoming to anyone getting into Nodejs.
| reid wrote:
| Many great memories with Mikeal at the first few NodeConfs,
| walking around Portland, debates over coffee in Oakland, and
| NodeConf Adventure at Walker Creek Ranch. Very thankful for what
| Mikeal has done in the JS community. So sad to hear of his
| passing.
| essgee wrote:
| I had the pleasure of meeting Mikeal on IRC when we were just
| teenagers. Countless hours were spent on owned meetingplace
| servers getting to know one another. I always found myself
| impressed with his breadth of knowledge on nearly every topic of
| conversation.
|
| We let several years pass before reconnecting two years ago this
| month. We sat at the alameda yacht club for hours discussing
| family, fatherhood, career, and sutras, his passion was as
| addictive as it had always been.
|
| With a newborn, he had every reason to avoid meeting, but his
| nature was giving. By the end we had affirmed our friendship and
| my heart was calm. We agreed to meet again. My belief is that
| some day we will.
|
| I love you Mikeal and I will miss you dearly.
| jlipps wrote:
| RIP Mikeal. Will always fondly remember our random
| philosophy/religion chats at tech conferences.
| paulbjensen wrote:
| I remember him being a well-known person in the early days of
| Node.js around 2011/2012, being on the NodeUp podcast and active
| on Twitter back then.
|
| I'm sorry to hear of his passing.
| Hortinstein wrote:
| Loved the node up podcast, especially the episode on databases.
| He was always a great presence on there. Played a big roll in
| getting me back into hobby programming after I finished my
| undergrad
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| I might feel bad if I only knew who he was and, so far, I haven't
| been able to find that out and no one has mentioned it here.
| IsaacSchlueter wrote:
| Mikeal Rogers was a prolific Node.js developer and community
| leader. He created the popular "request" library, ran the
| initial NodeConf events, helped design the npm registry, and
| provided a strong leadership that helped get Node.js into a
| foundation structure with open governance.
| sh1mmer wrote:
| When Node was just getting big I met Mikael for the first time at
| some Node event or another. It's hard to overstate or forget how
| welcoming he was, always excited to see folks, and the one
| getting the energy of the room going.
|
| The more time I spent with Mikael the more I saw him doing all
| the small things that needed doing for a community, or an event.
| Even just hanging out Mikael was always so considerate and tried
| to make things special for everyone.
|
| He will be missed.
| nailer wrote:
| His own events were rad. I remember O'Reilly running some giant
| corporate event (maybe called JSfest) and Mikeal rented out the
| Marines Memorial Theatre in San Francisco for a couple of days
| beforehand and had way kore interesting and relevant talks by
| nearly every major person in the JavaScript ecosystem.
| adrianparsons wrote:
| Yes! He organized a barebones conference out of the Meetup
| office in New York. The premise was that all attendees would
| do a 10 minute talk on any subject (I think it was called
| 10conf?). Mikeal spoke about his pour-over coffee setup while
| using it to make coffee for everyone.
|
| I really enjoyed time I spent with him and appreciated his
| kindness and leadership in the community. My thoughts are
| with his family and loved ones.
| carlgreene wrote:
| Wow this comes as a surprise and is so so sad. When I was getting
| into programming a decade ago Mikeal's twitter was a huge
| resource in keeping me up to date and learning things about Node.
|
| I never met him IRL, but you form a one way relationship with
| people you look up to online and Mikeal is one of the people for
| me. May he rest easy.
| 3dsnano wrote:
| I had the chance to work with Mikeal in the early node days. He
| gave me, a weird designer type, the opportunity to make something
| cool with node. I will always remember him as kind, curious, and
| optimistic.
|
| What a creative soul. Thank you Mikeal.
| staticvar wrote:
| RIP Mikeal. You were truly an inspiration.
| tmsh wrote:
| +1 he was a great guy.
|
| Sad in a way on the same day this is posted
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44241549 (which for me is
| super inspiring). Mikeal would've done so much with the stronger
| and stronger AI out there (though perhaps questioning it of
| course in his own way). His cancer diaries was just one example
| of how he couldn't help always being a leader in what he did.
| nailer wrote:
| Dang (or new person) can we please have a black bar?
|
| Everyone that sends an HTTP request in Node uses Mikeal's work:
| firstly he wrote the first NPM module to handle HTTP requests and
| then he worked tirelessly to ensure that module was never needed
| and high-level excellent HTTP support was built into node JS
| itself.
|
| Mikeal also worked on freeing node.js from Joyent via the iojs
| fork, and ran node events way before it was commercially viable
| to do so.
| sandinmyjoints wrote:
| I really appreciated his work on setting up governance for Node
| (in addition to his work on request and other stuff as other
| people have mentioned). It is probably largely forgotten now,
| but at the time it seemed like a big risk to Node being able to
| move forward technically and generally. I remember that the day
| Joyent agreed to let go of Node, he posted somewhere about
| celebrating at a bar in Oakland, where I lived at the time, but
| I was tired and didn't feel like being social so didn't attend,
| which I have always regretted since it would have been great to
| meet him in person and celebrate the victory.
| sourishkrout wrote:
| RIP dude! You were truly one of a kind.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| A beautiful obituary, a good person. Thank you.
| xp84 wrote:
| I was not a close friend by any stretch. But I did have the honor
| of meeting him years ago through friends and spending a little
| time with him socially.
|
| He loved and did so much for his family, and for the JS community
| as well.
|
| I am so sad and honestly, angry that he was taken from us so
| young. He would have done so much more. But also, he certainly
| did enough. I hope he felt good in the end about how he spent his
| time.
|
| Rest in peace, Mikeal.
| ahyield wrote:
| Cancer took many loved ones like Mikeal. I wish humanity could
| beat it for once and find a cure for it...
| mrmagoo17 wrote:
| A true inspiration during my journey with Node.js! So sorry to
| hear the news... RIP Mikeal!
| hnbad wrote:
| Wow, that took me by surprise. I can't say I've followed his
| exact involvements closely but his name was definitely one I'd
| come across a lot, especially in the early years of Node.js. I
| even met him at a conference once, only recognizing that it had
| been him afterwards and thinking, he's shorter than I had
| thought. I can't really say much as the encounter was brief but
| he seemed like a genuinely nice person.
|
| Fuck cancer.
| ellroy wrote:
| He had so much energy for the project in the early days. Although
| I've moved on to other tech the excitement around Node back then
| was great. I miss it
| kyungw00k wrote:
| He was well-known online for the request module -- a name every
| developer seemed to know.
|
| I first met him in person at playnode.io 2012 in Korea. Despite
| the language barrier, he patiently listened to my broken English
| and took the time to answer with kindness and sincerity. That was
| my first impression of him -- and it stayed with me.
|
| He taught not just through code, but through the way he treated
| others.
|
| Rest in peace.
| IsaacSchlueter wrote:
| That trip is the origin of many of my happiest memories. It was
| amazing to meet you all, and to share that adventure with him.
| The playnode.io team and the Korean JavaScript community
| treated us with such incredible warmth and kindness, we talked
| often over the years about what a wonderful experience that
| was.
| thiagodelgado wrote:
| Fuck. What a sad day. So young and talented. Truly heartbreaking
| Vekz wrote:
| Very sad. I had met Mikeal a few times in the nearly Node
| community hackathons and meetups. He had been in my orbit of
| Node.js and Oakland communities for decades but we were never
| close. Always felt like ships in the night. I had been following
| his cancer diaries hoping for the best. There truly was a magic
| to that early Node.js hacker house days and Mikeal was a huge
| driving force for that.
| KevinHalter wrote:
| Mikeal was the CTO of my 2nd startup, Getable. Incredible human
| being, foodie, technologist, intelligence and overall caring
| person. He shared the diagnosis several months back and
| everything happened so quickly. Thoughts and prayers to Anna (his
| wife), children and family.
|
| When we worked together, Anna and Mikeal were not yet parents and
| we were all a lot younger. He is a humble, beautiful human being.
| I know his spirit will live on with his children. I just don't
| know what to say other than sending my love to his family and
| #CancerSucks
| funky_tek wrote:
| Mikeal was simply an amazing human being. I'm writing this
| wearing my NodeConf shirt right now--one of the best times I've
| ever had in any community. Being friends with Mikeal was
| incredible because you could always pick up where you left off,
| no matter how much time had passed. During our time working
| together on ProtocolLabs projects, we talked almost daily about
| work, open source, ideas, philosophy, spirituality, and of
| course, hip hop.
|
| He possessed a unique and brilliant intellect paired with a
| compassionate and generous spirit. His interpretation of Buddhist
| sutras and other sacred writings through an engineer's lens was
| insightful and inspiring--the foundation for many great
| conversations. I had just moved back to the Bay Area around the
| time of his diagnosis and was looking forward to reconnecting in
| person. Things happened so fast. Sending love to his family.
| gitgud wrote:
| Devastating... I discovered Mikeal like most people did, from
| curiosity about npm packages in a project.
|
| He wrote a lot of opensource projects and was a refreshingly nice
| and patient person to interact with on GitHub. Condolences to his
| friends and family, he'll be missed in the FOSS world
|
| https://github.com/mikeal
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