In memory of Razetime

Question

Alternatively, a post I never thought I'd be writing.

At 17:47 on the 29th of June (UTC), the following was posted in the J Forums:

[Hi],

I am the father of Raghu Ranganathan.

Raghu my son who was 22 is no more, he drowned in the ocean and passed away in Taiwan, we are in Taiwan to bring him back to Chennai.

I remember that he participated in the Jwiki community, but I dont know about his involvement much in your project.

Please let anyone in the technology world who need to know about this tragic event.

Thanks, Ranga

(source).

Raghu Ranganathan is better known around code golf as Razetime.

Razetime was a code golfer greatly interested in array programming languages, making significant contributions to resources like the K wiki, one of the most comprehensive tutorials about ngn/K, Factor documentation and the APL wiki. He listed writing documentation and tutorials for array languages as one of his passions

He was also one of the very first Vyxalers and Vyxal developers, helping get the language from indev versions to the first major release (eg if you've ever seen the on-screen keyboard at vyxal.pythonanywhere.com, you've seen razetime's work in action). He was also crucial in creating promotional ideas like the deadlineless vyxal bounty.

But he also helped document countless other esolangs and golflangs, including MAWP, Pip, Husk, Add++, Jelly and Flax. He even made his own golflang: Limn.

Yet Razetime was more than just the array language guy or the documentation guy. He was a friend who'd be happy to go along with whatever you wanted to talk about, whether it be exam preparation, rock pile building or terrible quality username puns (example 1, example 2). Overall, razetime was a real one, one of the good ones if I do say so myself.

I think it's fair to say he'll be missed by a lot of people in the communities he was active in, and that the world of language documentation will never quite be the same.

Feel free to use answers to this meta post as an opportunity to share your thoughts, memories, and experiences of razetime.

Rest in peace all ze time, Razetime.

Answer 1

I got this email on Sat, Jun 29, 15:24:

[Hi],

I am Raghu Ranganathan (@razetime) father.

Raghu drowned in the ocean and passed away in Taiwan, we are in Taiwan to bring him back to Chennai, his home.

Please let the APL community know about it as we dont know who to reach out about this message.

Thanks, Ranga.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Taiwan APL meetup on May 27:

Among many other things, Raghu created the APLgolf website, and since he did a paid project for Dyalog (reading metadata from image files), he was technically my colleague. He was also going to help me with a project to catalogue APL materials, but I failed to manage it, so nothing happened. Maybe if I'd given him that work to do, he wouldn't have been at the beach…

RIP. 😢

Answer 2

Thanks for putting this post up - Raghu would have really appreciated it and it's great to be able to put something in his memory.

I come to this a bit late. Raghu was, from my side, my closest friend at uni this past year. As strange as it may sound, I only heard about his passing a few days ago when I found this page through a Google search.

I can't imagine the unbearable impact this loss has had on his family. I hope they can find comfort wherever they can.

Reading here about how much he meant to his online community (and he did mention to me, a long lapsed ex-programmer, some of the projects he was enjoying), I wanted to add a few words about his offline life to celebrate Raghu if I can.

Last year, at the very start of my postgrad study, I found myself sitting next to Raghu and his roommate at the foreign student orientation at NTHU in Hsinchu, Taiwan. We instantly hit it off. We were neighbors in the dorm and spent the first weeks hustling together - figuring out phones, cheap food, free bikes and fun social events.

Raghu was from both California and Chennai, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell where he was from. He was cosmopolitan, a global citizen, from everywhere and nowhere at once.

He was kind and friendly, always taking that extra step to connect with people. When the Taiwanese students in the dorm held a party for foreign students, Raghu was the first to break the ice with a joke and get to know everyone. As many of you have mentioned here, he was generous with his time and energy. On his 22nd birthday, he spent the day making a huge batch of sweet rice pudding and invited the whole dorm to have a bowl.

He was full of enthusiasm about learning, and the university was a perfect place for him to grow. He even joined a secretive student club that explored forgotten, hidden spaces around Hsinchu. Although his degree was in computer science, he read widely and loved discussing everything - politics, philosophy, social issues, cinema, psychology, history - and his enthusiasm was infectious. If someone had learned something exciting in their studies, they would find an eager audience in Raghu.

He was also a humanist, seeing shades of grey, even when he disagreed with someone's stance. His intellectual curiosity and wisdom were beyond his years, and even now, I'm astounded at how young he was.

I only knew Raghu for a brief time, but he was something special. He inspired people to be kind, to treasure friendships and to live in the moment.

I'll miss him.

Rest in peace, my friend.