John Matthew Vlissides (August 2, 1961 – November 24, 2005) was a

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

known mainly as one of the four authors (referred to as the

Gang of Four The Gang of Four () was a Maoist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes. The gang ...

) of the book '' Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software''. Vlissides referred to himself as "#4 of the Gang of Four and wouldn't have it any other way".

Education/Career

Vlissides studied electrical engineering at

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. Since 1986 he worked as software engineer, consultant, research assistant and scholar at Stanford University. From 1991 he stayed at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, New York as research staff member. He was author of several books, of many magazine articles and conference papers and was awarded with several patents. His work concentrated on object oriented technology, design patterns and software modeling.

Death

John Vlissides died on

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...

2005 (November 24, 2005) following a struggle with complications from a

brain tumor A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seco ...

. He was 44 years old.

Posthumous

Ward Cunningham and

Grady Booch Grady Booch (born February 27, 1955) is an American software engineer, best known for developing the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh. He is recognized internationally for his innovative work in software archi ...

(o
his blog entry of Nov 27
relaying a call from John Vlissides's widow, Dru Ann) have called for stories to remember him by. Since then, there has been a steady inflow of contributions located at the

WikiWikiWeb The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham to accompany the Portland Pattern Repository website discussing software design patterns. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' ori ...

page for Vlissides. In recognition of the contributions to computer science that John Vlissides made during his lifetime, ACM SIGPLAN has established th
John Vlissides Award
The award is presented annually to a doctoral student participating in the

OOPSLA OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications) is an annual ACM research conference. OOPSLA mainly takes place in the United States, while the sister conference of OOPSLA, ECOOP, is typically held in Europe. It is ope ...

Doctoral Symposium showing significant promise in applied software research.

References

External links

* * * (PDF file)
Obituary in Washington Post

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vlissides, John Engineers from New York (state) American technology writers IBM employees Stanford University alumni University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Deaths from brain tumor 1961 births 2005 deaths Place of birth missing American writers of Greek descent People from Hawthorne, New York IBM Research computer scientists 20th-century American engineers Dahl–Nygaard Prize