HN Explorer

Ask HN: What Happened to TJ Holowaychuk?

62 points by philipscott ↗ HN
His startup, Apex, has shut down: https://apex.sh/

It appears he stopped using Twitter in 2022. 0 Github contributions in the last year.

For those that don't know TJ, he's created numerous NPM libraries, including Express for Node.js. For more context, here's a blog post I found that talks about TJ's contributions: https://medium.com/@kelas/how-is-tj-holowaychuk-so-insanely-productive-604818b4e9eb

Is he alright? I hope he's OK.

22 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] thread
colesantiago
he moved on.
philipscott
:(

The idea of moving on from programming makes me sad. I suppose for some people it's a job, but to me giving up programming would be like giving up on writing poetry or playing music.

evbogue
I once upon a time burned out on photography and look where it led me. People change, and we should celebrate it.
tomcam
Where… where did it lead you?
pcthrowaway
TJ has already produced more open source software (much of it still in use, despite being dated if not maintained by others at this point) than 90% of devs will write in their entire careers (between open and closed source), so I think if anyone has earned it, it's him.
philipscott
I 100% agree that if TJ wants to retire from programming, he should. Pressuring him to do something he doesn't want to do is wrong.

My comment more of a personal comment. Imagine you're an amateur painter, and you enjoy painting. You live in the same era as Michelangelo, and you admire him. But, one day Michelangelo announces he no longer enjoys painting, and decides to become a sailor instead. And, you realize there might be a day you won't enjoy painting either.

evbogue
and there is something to be said about sailors who may or may not have retired from programming of course
philipscott
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with being a sailor. It's more a fear of change — thinking you'll always enjoy painting, and then realizing there might be a day when the passion is gone.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
setheron
I remember the idea being that he wasn't a real person or a group of people. Fun times. Hope you're doing well TJ.
evbogue
I never believed that rumor. Coders can go through hyper productive phases where they are making something that never existed before -- such as server side routers in JavaScript.

We forget that there was a time when JavaScript was just for manipulating the DOM.

Hope he's well and getting a good night's rest tonight. I know I should, but here I am typing into hacker news.

hinkley
TJ was mostly porting modules from ruby. When you have a feature set and an architecture that’s proven you can go very fast on a project. Mocha is substantially rspec.
philipscott
Oh hey you're UW SE2011! I'm UW SE2021 o/

Small world

mekster
I naturally picked up to use Koa (Express successor), Pug (then Jade) and Stylus (feels more productive than SCSS) to boost productivity only to later find they originated from a same person TJ. Excellent mind.

And those are just part of his commitments.

Alifatisk
I was wondering about this too a couple of months back. Couldn't find any answer but seeing Apex.sh go away was sad.

Tj's choice of minimalistic design is still a huge inspiration for me, I still enjoy it to this day!

codegladiator
Oh TJ was such an inspiration for me personally. All the rumors that it's a company actually made it even more fun. And then out of sight out of mind.
activeno4436
Think he moved on to other business, as posted. I always appreciated his work, too.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
tjholowaychuk
I'm fine :) just taking a much needed break from software