Gianluigi Quario

[Morten|Dyalog]

It is with great sadness that we post this news to the Dyalog Forums: On June 23rd, Gianluigi Quario slipped while running in a race on mountain roads, fell into a ravine, and died. Many members of the Dyalog team remember Gianluigi fondly as a man who gently brought things that he felt we had missed to our attention, always with a smile and typically also a helpful suggestion. He cared deeply about the APL language and helped keep us honest. He will be sorely missed.

Carlo Alberto Spinicci’s words capture Gianluigi’s spirit succinctly:

Long ago, Gianluigi Quario, at the time one the very few Italian APL freelance professionals, was invited to talk about his APL experiences in front of the small audience of one of the last Italian APL meetings.
He started off proclaiming “Iverson did not invent APL, he discovered it”. (Later, he ended his speech reading a short poem about God). His neo-platonic assertion left his fellow programmers in the audience almost speechless!

One of the last to surrender to a new time, when the one-man band, who mixes specific domain knowledge with APL skills to provide tailored solutions, is no more an acceptable solution, he joined APL Italiana about a decade ago.

There he had to learn the new game of working together with people of a different age and culture. The change was much smoother than everybody else expected.

Still, it is probably true that he was particularly pleased when he was able to attack a problem on his own: the design of a new utility, or some actuarial calculation, or even testing the definition of one of the APL functions to take it to the edges.

While not a loquacious man, he still liked to be dragged in arguments about anything: from religion to politics going through the esthetics of coding and the intricacies of making a large code base maintainable. His answers (or provocations) were pugnacious, but without ever crossing the line.

Probably I was supposed to be able to say more about Gianluigi and APL: when he started using it and how. The problem is that I don’t know. When I started looking around to find any sign of APL and APL’ers around me, he was already there. Apparently everyone using APL in Italy at that time (really few people) seemed to know him. I decided that the existence of the APL’er Gianluigi was an assumption.

An article appeared in the local paper http://www.bergamonews.it/cronaca/incidente-alla-avatrail-cade-e-muore-un-66enne-podista-bergamasco-176552; Google Translate does a reasonable job of translating this to English.

[Morten|Dyalog]

[paulmansour]

Very sorry to hear this. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

[Paul Grosvenor]

What a great shame. I can only echo Paul Mansour in saying my thoughts and best wishes are with his family and friends.

[JohnS|Dyalog]

What a tragedy and a loss.
Gianluigi was a polite, enthusiastic and tenacious contributor to the dfns workspace.

      )xload dfns
      notes find 'Quario'