Today was a sad day for me. I just read in the latest Software Development Times (March 1, 2006) issue on page 5 that the creator of Symantec's Visual Cafe and founder of Java software company M7, Mansour Safai, died on 2/9/2006. He was 43. The cause of death was brain cancer.
Safai was a brilliant software engineer/architect. While working for Logitech he created the Multiscope debugger. At Symantec he was vice president and general manager of their Internet tools division. In 1997, he developed Visual Cafe which was a multiplatform RAD tool for writing, debugging and deploying Java applets and applications. I did get to research and evaluate Visual Cafe in the late 1990s. I thought that it was quite impressive. Java at the time was just not mature enough for a adoption at my organization.
If you are not familiar with these tools that Safai created, they are all highly capable and innovative. His later company, M7 developed NitroX which was a very nice tool for permitting real-time WYSIWYG development of Struts and JSF applications within the Eclipse environment. I had the opportunity of evaluating and trying out NitroX last year (2005). What NitroX does behind the scenes is quite impressive. M7 has a patent on the algrothims implemented for coordinating and managing all the XML files in Struts, JSF, Eclipse and Java development.
Mansour Safai played, guitar, and was an athlete. He played competetive tennis in high school and enjoyed skiiing according to the SDT article.
The passing of a great software engineer, architect, and human being at such an early age is a great loss to humanity. His soul has moved on to the next level of existence and I am sure that he will continue his work in another realm.
This morning I offered a moment of silence and prayer for the passing of this great software engineer and architect. This news will probably go unnoticed with all the events happening in our modern world. If you happen to read this blog, out of respect for Mansour Safai please reserve a brief moment today in your life to remember him.
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4 comments:
I never knew of Mansour Safai until today but I DO remember Visual Cafe, a great tool for its time. RIP Mansour Safai
I discovered Mansour by accident and very happy to have done that. Very sad to know that a great personality and intellectual passed away so early. I think the software community need to regularly discuss these new heroes and also introduce the students to them. Students should have an opportunity to learn about these heroes from two standpoints
1. Humane:- The challenges that they encountered in their search (research) of these amazing products and how they faced those.
2. Technical:- What kind of technical solutions they worked on before reaching the final conclusion.
I am glad to have found about Mansour online and to it is very inspiring. May your soul rest in peace.
I must say, I thought this was a pretty interesting read when it comes to this topic. Liked the material. . .
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