Like many, when I read the news of Joel’s passing I just couldn’t believe it. I spoke with Joel at several conferences, a local user group, as well as a visit to my workplace to talk about APEX (of course.) While his technical chops were without question – the most inspiring thing about Joel was the passion he had for the community around the product he helped bring into the world.
He was always so enthusiastic to hear about what other people were doing and how they were using APEX to solve problems and bring value to their organizations. After a visit to my work where he saw a simple APEX application I had built he insisted I show it at the KScope “open mic”. He wasn’t interested because I had shown off a bunch of APEX features (I hadn’t) but simply because I had used the tool to solve a DBA problem and he wanted others too see that perspective. He was also interested because I had an original app from the HTMLDB days still running in production and it had survived upgrade after upgrade including to APEX v18 (the latest at the time.) Again, he wasn’t interested so much in showing off the endurance and migration capabilities of APEX but in showing the value my HTMLDB application has brought all those years ago and was continuing to bring value.
Always passionate for what the community was doing, what the community wanted, and where the community was going. Always approachable, he was everything you could want from an advocate and a resource.
I’m saddened by the loss of a great leader in the community and the loss of great man to the world. My heart goes out to his family who lost a father, a husband, and a brother.
Tributes come in from around the world…
https://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/apex_pm/r/joel/memories
He will truly be missed.