It’s really sad to hear about the passing away of Phil Bagwell. Phil was an all-around great guy, and a big supporter of my work with Kojo. He was also a big contributor, with his work on Persistent data structures, to the rise of functional programming over the past few years.
I first came in contact with him when he requested me to add some new features to Kojo to support the Scala Tutorial that he was writing. He went on to interview me about my work with Kojo. After that, he was a regular and reliable source of feedback on new features that I added to Kojo. He seemed to be coding right till the very end – he sent me a draft version of part 2 of his Scala Tutorial not too long ago (this will soon be included in Kojo).
I regret that I have lost the chance to meet him face to face. He will be sorely missed.
Many condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.
The Kojo Learning Environment 