历史与人物wired.com
李·霍洛威发生了什么
What Happened to Lee
2020 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇 Wired 特写讲述了 Cloudflare 联合创始人 Lee Holloway 的故事：他是一位才华横溢的年轻程序员，却患上额颞叶痴呆（FTD），认知能力逐渐衰退。文章通过家人、同事和朋友的视角，记录了他的技术成就、病情发展以及围绕照护与医学选择的无奈。
为什么经久不衰：它不只关于一位技术天才的陨落，更让人直面脑力、身份与疾病之间的脆弱关系，因此多年后仍能引发技术从业者的共鸣。
HN 评论精选
作为多年同事兼室友，他补充了 Lee 的技术与游戏才能、病情无解，以及 Lee 一贯“减少无用功”的工程风格如何通向 Cloudflare。
Sandra 这篇写得很出色，捕捉到了 Lee、他的家人、工作以及他的衰退。我曾和 Lee 做了多年同事和室友。补充一些可能让这里的人感兴趣的信息：他玩电子游戏（RTS 和 RPG）和国际象棋都非常强，手眼协调无可挑剔，还共同创办过一个游戏公会。但这些现在已经不重要了。没有什么可做的了。医学或技术无法在他的时间窗口内解决他的病。eastdakota 提出愿意不惜代价，但最不坏的选择是把他送到大洋彼岸，让他成为测试对象，而那些测试在他目前状态下很可能无法承受。他刻意“减少无用功”。他的大学项目演变成了专利，也带来了在 UnSpam 和 Project HoneyPot 的工作。Project HoneyPot 的技术释放了 Cloudflare 的核心价值，而 Cloudflare 是他共同创办的。他的项目和架构都是刻意为了最大化复用、减少浪费。
thephyber查看英文原文
Sandra did a wonderful piece in capturing Lee, his family, his work, and his degeneration. Lee was a coworker and roommate of mine for years. Some additional info that might be of interest to this crowd: He was fantastic at video games (RTS and RPG) and chess. He had impeccable hand-eye coordination. He co-founded a gaming clan. None of that is relevant anymore. There is nothing to be done. His condition can't be solved (within his timeframe) by medicine or technology. eastdakota offered to spend whatever it took, but the least worst option was to move him across the ocean and turn him into a test subject for tests that he probably wouldn't tolerate in his current state. He was deliberate in "minimizing toil". His university projects morphed into patents and a job at UnSpam and Project HoneyPot. Project HoneyPot's technology unlocked the core value to CloudFlare, which he cofounded. His projects and stacks were deliberately chosen for maximal reuse and to minimize wasted effort. I thank Matthew and Michelle for keeping the story of his journey alive. I can't imagine the tech periodicals are knocking down their doors to write stories like these. Connie Loizos had another piece on him at TechCrunch in 2019[1] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/15/cloudflare-has-a-third-cofounder-lee-holloway-whos-credited-with-making-the-company-what-is-today/
评论者以父亲患 FTD 的亲身经历说明这种病的残酷：性格表象可能掩盖衰退，术后谵妄可能是转折点，且存在遗传检测问题。
读到“神经科医生给出结论：他看起来是典型的额颞叶痴呆（FTD）”那段时，我心里像被猛击了一下。我父亲过去一年也被诊断出这种病（此前显然已经挣扎了一段时间），并迅速衰退。他得的是不同亚型，而确实有一件事没变：他的性格。实际上这曾让我误判了一阵。他仍会抛出惯常的烂笑话和口头禅，但过一阵你会意识到这些几乎像反射，常常在语境里并不成立。有趣的是，Lee 在心脏手术后似乎病情被放大了。我父亲在做大手术后也有严重“术后谵妄”约一个月，虽然有所恢复，但那绝对是他大幅衰退的起点。遗憾的是，他三月中旬搬进护理机构后，几周内就因感染新冠住院，并于本月 4 日因此去世。唯一的好事是，过去几年我多次看望他，多次说过“再见”，即便只是心理上而非实际上，我得以见到我所熟悉的“父亲”。显然这常是遗传性疾病，可以检测基因标记。作为一个靠头脑工作的程序员/管理者……
billti查看英文原文
> The neurologists delivered their verdict: He appeared to have a textbook case of frontotemporal dementia—known by the shorthand FTD Oh man, was that a kick in the guts when I got to that bit. My Dad was diagnosed with that in the past year, (after obviously struggling for a while), and declined rapidly. He had a different variant, and indeed the one thing that DIDN'T change was his personality. In fact, that's what kind of fooled me for a while. He would still trot out his usual bad jokes and regular phrases, but after a while you realize these are almost like reflexes, and often wouldn't really make sense in context. It was interesting to see for Lee how this seemed amplified after heart surgery. My Dad had really bad "post-operative delirium" for about a month after major heart surgery, and while he recovered somewhat, that was definitely the start of his major decline. Sadly, after moving into a care facility in mid-March, within a couple weeks he was in hospital after contracting Covid-19. He passed away on the 4th of this month from it. The only good to come out of all this was that I'd visited him many times over the past couple years and said "goodbye" many times thinking it might be the last time, even if just mentally and not physically, I'd get to see "my Dad", as I knew him. Apparently it is often a genetic disorder that can be hereditary, and you can get tested for the genetic markers. As a coder/manager myself who depends on my mind for work, and enjoys being mentally challenged and active, (and I also have young kids), something like this scares the crap out of me. I'm not sure I want to know if I might have it. For one thing, being in the U.S. healthcare system, if I did have the markers, would that then count as a "pre-existing condition" I'd have to disclose?
Cloudflare 同事回忆 Lee 设计的单 Postgres 数据库加存储过程架构，称其为“数据库内的宏伟单体”，并认为这是他在 Cloudflare 的代表作。
这个故事捕捉到了太多我所熟知的 Lee。我再补充一点对 Lee 早期 Cloudflare 架构的赞赏。一切由单个 Postgres 数据库控制，大量使用存储过程，存储过程又调用其他过程，层层调用。它就像数据库内部的一个巨型程序。我花了一阵才理解他做了什么，但真的很棒。数据库运行一切，那些函数确保保留审计日志、确保传入的用户 ID 有权调用，有些过程还会外部调用 API，包括获取 SSL 证书之类。那是数据库内的一座宏伟单体。我在数据库外围工作（那确实是 Lee 的领地），他会告诉我预期输出或要创建什么 API，我按他的规格写代码，然后我们接起来。如果要找一件代表他在 Cloudflare 所作所为的产物，那就是那个数据库。他曾在被我们称为“The Beast”的笔记本上写它，那台机器重得离谱、内存等配置过载，这样他走到哪儿都能带着一个迷你测试版 Cloudflare。
jgrahamc查看英文原文
I posted this hours ago and then stepped away. The story captures so much about the Lee I knew so well. I'll add one piece of praise for Lee's early architecture of Cloudflare. Everything was controlled by a single Postgres database that made very heavy use of stored procedures, that called other procedures, that called others. It was one giant program inside the database. It took me a while to comprehend what he'd done but it was really great. The database ran everything and all those functions made sure that audit logs were kept, that the calls were allowed for the user ID being passed in, and some of these procedures made external calls to APIs including getting things like SSL certificates. It was a magnificent monolith inside a database. I worked on the periphery of the database (it was truly Lee's domain) and he'd tell me what output to expect or API to create and I'd code to his spec. and we'd just hook it up. If any single artefact represents what he did at Cloudflare, it's that database. And he used to code it on a laptop we called "The Beast" because it was so crazily heavy and overloaded with memory etc. that he'd carry around a mini, test Cloudflare wherever he went.
这位工程师由 Lee 的故事联想到自身专注力衰退，担心是倦怠还是更严重问题，凸显了技术从业者对认知衰退的普遍焦虑。
太可怕了。作为一名软件工程师，这种事让我害怕。我感觉过去大约四年自己一直在缓慢、稳定地衰退。这只是倦怠吗？我需要一个新爱好吗？我以前热爱编程，每天花 12 小时敲代码。现在，我很难把注意力集中在一行代码上超过 5 分钟。到什么程度只是倦怠，到什么程度就是更严重的问题？这让我恐惧。我想这对 Lee 身边的人来说也是个难题。我们对人体了解得太少。轻松查询身体状态、评估哪些功能正常、哪些需要帮助，我们的能力很糟糕。我只希望 Lee 无论处于什么状态，都不要受苦。
rubicon33查看英文原文
Terrifying. As a software engineer, shit like this scares me. I've felt like I'm on a steady, slow, decline for the last ~4 years. Is it just burnout? Do I need a new hobby? I used to love programming... Spent 12 hours a day jamming on it. Now, I struggle to keep my mind on a line of code for more than 5 minutes. At what point is it just burnout, or at what point is it something more? That's what's terrifying to me. I imagine that was a challenge for those close to Lee. We just know so little about the human body. Our ability to easily query the state of the body, to assess which functional components are working, and which need help, is dismal. I just hope that Lee, in whatever state he is in, isn't suffering.
历次讨论
同类还值得读
开发者无薪坚持完成 Mac 图形计算器：一个秘密项目的故事
Dev stays without pay to finish Mac Graphing Calculator as skunkworks project
苹果 Mac 图形计算器（Graphing Calculator）开发者的亲述：在项目被砍后，几位工程师在没有报酬、没有正式授权的情况下，以“地下项目”方式偷偷留在公司把软件做完…
历史与人物上首页 6 次 · 2009–2022pacifict.com理查德·费曼与 Connection Machine
Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine
长文回忆费曼晚年参与 Connection Machine 并行计算机项目的经历：他分析路由器、用自创的并行 Basic 编写 QCD 程序，也涉足细胞自动机等主题。
历史与人物上首页 5 次 · 2010–2021longnow.org编辑精选负 2000 行代码
-2000 Lines of Code
folklore.org 上 Andy Hertzfeld 记录的一则苹果 Macintosh 开发轶事：Bill Atkinson 被问到写了多少行代码时，回答“-2000 行…
历史与人物上首页 4 次 · 2014–2022folklore.org编辑精选Dennis Ritchie 的第一版 C 编译器（约 1972 年）
Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler (c. 1972)
这个 GitHub 仓库保存了 Dennis Ritchie 约 1972 年编写的最早 C 编译器源码，是 C 语言和 Unix 早期历史的一手材料。
历史与人物上首页 4 次 · 2013–2025github.com一位破解赛马密码的赌徒
A Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code (2018)
彭博社 2018 年的长篇特写，讲述数学家 Bill Benter 如何用统计模型和算法在赛马博彩中持续盈利、累计赢得近十亿美元的故事。
历史与人物上首页 4 次 · 2018–2024bloomberg.com