Meeting With Heng Sin

Yesterday i took time off to meet up with our ADempiere greatest java coder, Low Heng Sin. What he did, for one, with our ZK Ajax UI is phenomenal. Wherever i go among our ADempiere top coders, they revered him as a class above them. It is inexplicable that the greatest guru in our project is only 20 minutes away from my farm home, where the project was born online in the first place! Not thousands of miles away such as in Colombia where Carlos Ruiz is, in Romania where Teo Sarca is, in Bulgaria where Trifon Trifonov is from, in Berlin where Karsten Thiemann is, in Melbourne where Paul Bowden is, but just in Tropicana township off the toll highway that i often commute on, whenever i venture out physically.

I seldom meet him as often as i should out of respect and also the composition of his character. He doesn't like to hold the stage nor talk politics. Just java and more java. On Open Source projects he has much experience and my intent yesterday is to get out from him some idea on how our ADempiere project should head to. He began by saying he did not support the idea of a PMC that has control only on part of the trunk or release branch but must be totally on the whole repository of codes. He recount how other FOSS projects are strict about quality of coders allowed into their fold.

"5 mistakes and you are out", he says. This makes me wonder. I have wished to be with a guru and now Karma has brought me one right before my eyes but yet i have spent 3 years not delving much but mostly into the never ending politics of our bazaar. The infighting was fun at first but now is a drag as the software is not expanding as fast as it would, but more poision as more charlatans ride into town blasting away minus the needed contribution that makes up a world class ERP system.

After an hour long chat, i invited him to lunch at a new cafe below his small office and we chatted some more. I had Wariola with me and he also picked Heng Sin's mind on virtualization issues. We took turns taking snapshots with Heng Sin. After saying goodbye and expressing our gratitude for his time, Wariola told me that he finds Heng Sin too casual, relaxed and easily taken for granted. Well, i replied that it is always the case with the real top great guys i know.