Obituary notice for Aahz

Core Development
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While reading File 770, a fanzine for the science-fiction community, I was startled to find an obituary notice for Aahz Maruch, who helped with Python development in the 1990s and was a well-known figure on comp.lang.python back then. The obituary is item #12 on http://file770.com/pixel-scroll-10-15-21-i-know-what-pixel-you-scrolled-last-summer/ but I’ll also quote the 2-paragraph item in its entirety so you don’t need to click through:

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  1. AAHZ MARUCH (1967-2021). [Item by James Davis Nicoll.] Python programmer, whose fannish activities date back at least as far as classic USENET (alt.poly and other groups), died October 14 following several years of ill health. Survived by partner Steph [sic] Maruch.

Editor’s postscript: Alan Prince Winston earlier this year described him as “an unstoppable-seeming guy” who “became a contra and square dance caller and choreographer despite really severe hearing impairment.”

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I’ve been unable to find any further confirmation or obituary online. The last reference I can find to Aahz in the CPython commit logs is in 2003, when Raymond committed some changes to the tutorial that Aahz had suggested. He also co-wrote the book “Python for Dummies” with his partner Stef.

–amk

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Man, that’s a shame. I hadn’t seen Aahz on any Python-related groups for a long time (ten years maybe?)

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Indeed. I remember meeting Aahz a few times. His name also comes up first on bpo when assigning issues to people.

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I remember him well, he was very active in helping us build the community (he had tons of experience in that sort of thing from the Sci-Fi fandom community). For a long time he also helped out with mailing list moderation. A real shame.

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Aahz was one of those people whom I always delighted in seeing in person at conference, and I so admired his work in community building and project management for Python.