Today I learned that Jerold Haas, aka CompositionFore, is dead.

A friend shared with me a Wired article about his life, disappearance, and death. The article is interesting and well-written in its own right, telling a tale that some have likened to Into the Wild.

In light of the news, I thought I would take some time to reflect on our relationship.

Jerold and I were friends. By most people's standards we would probably be considered mere internet acquaintances, but debating the semantics of friendship can be left for another time.

I first met Jerold in the Merveilles Slack. If memory serves, we initially connected over a shared love of F#. He was a seasoned F# programmer and I was an F# beginner. Much of our interaction was in regards to working on FsCMS, an F#-based CMS focused on modularity.

I spent some time in Jerold's private Discord during the short period I was involved with FsCMS and for a little while after. We mostly just chatted via messages, but on a few occasions we did get on voice to talk. One of the things that I remember from the times we spoke was just how raucous his laugh was.

I didn't end up contributing much to FsCMS before my involvement petered out. As my involvement with the project ended, so did my communication with Jerold.

Unfortunately our Slack history has been lost to Slack's free-tier history limits and I am no longer a member of his Discord server (probably as a result of one of my server purges). It's a shame; I would have liked to go back through our chat logs.

The last remaining digital memories of Jerold lie tucked away in various corners of the internet:

• Twitter (@jeroldhaas)
• Twitter (@CompositionFore)
• GitHub (@jeroldhaas)
• GitHub (@composition4)
• LinkedIn
• SoundCloud
• YouTube
• itch.io

Rest in peace, Jerold. You will be missed.