Beman Dawes, RIP
I am sorry to report to r/cpp that Beman Dawes passed away yesterday.
Beman had an unusually large impact on C++ over his long and very productive life. My personal opinion of his most monumental achievement was getting Filesystem into standard C++, which was probably the most tortuous, lengthy, and difficult library to have ever been standardised (to date), and that followed a preceding tortuous, lengthy and difficult Boost peer review involving multiple redesigns of the proposed library. Beman was on WG21 from nearly the beginning, served as the Library Working Group chair for some time, and was one of the original cofounders of the Boost C++ Libraries. He also had a long history of continuous contributions to open source, starting from when many on r/cpp were still children.
Beman Dawes was my friend, inspiration, and collaborator. He was a living demonstration that collegial respect and kindness are fundamental to getting great results. His idea for Boost.org blossomed into a unique community, inventing the art of library design.
