RIP Neil Robinson

[JD Kromkowski]

As some of you might know Neil Robinson passed away in December following an unsuccessful battle with cancer.

Although I never had a chance to meet Neil in person (we came close while I was in London for a family vacation but our schedules didn’t mesh), I did correspond with him for nearly 25 years, starting way back in the Compuserve days when he was living in Germany.

He was always a helpful guy and an insightful coder, even as an autodidact like me and many others here.

He will be missed. My condolences to his wife and children and close friends.

During the summer 2017, before his last round of treatment, he mentioned to me the idea of making Superbase NG open-source, when he recovered. He was very hopeful about the treatments.

The userbase has dwindled as alternates emerged in the computing scene, while the pace of getting a robust Simpol/SBNG going was slower than he and all of us would have liked, as the industry matured from the “homebrew” that Superbase tapped into, and as many of us got older. Open-source could really expand the user-base. There are all kinds of kids in China, India, Brazil and the world who could use an open-source SBNG/Simpol to tap back into that autodidact spirit that existed back in the Compuserve days. The maintenance could be funded by licenses for the larger multi-user applications like 10 or more.

As new management takes over, I hope they will consider an open-source path as a memory to Neil’s spirit and his willing helpfulness.

[jaszczak]

Thank you for the update JD. I had heard from Neil’s son Ian of his passing and was greatly saddened as well, and also offer my condolences to his family and friends.

I’ve used Superbase and now Simpol in total now for only almost 20 years. I’ve loved the product for
my applications. I hope it can keep going- and growing. Neil had mentioned in October that another release was underway. Working with him over the internet was always both fun and impressive. I considered him a genius and will miss our interactions.

[Michael]

Neil was a good friend of me. I visited him often the last year. He was so hopeful that he win that fight.

And we discuss about new project what we want to do together.

His colleague and friend David, his son Ian, his best man and I want to continue his work. We do your best but we can never replace him. We do not want that because he is a part of your life and live in his work.

In the time of his cremation the server was hacked. We have to build it form scratch. And we are not finished until now. If you miss something let us know.

It will take time until everything works normal. We want to continue the development of superbase and simpol. That was his wish. And we want to do it. Especially for his family.

RIP Neil

We will miss you

[gus_62]

HI Neil,
a long time ago we meet. I hope your are healthy!!??

I have a problem with ‘OLD Superbase’ and OLE. I want to mark the borders in some Excel-cells fat, but i don’t know the syntax:

st.Range(“A10:C10”).Select()
st.Selection.Borders(xlEdgeBottom).Weight = “xlMedium”

It doesn’t work. Perhaps you know the correct syntax?!

Greetings
Gunther from germany

[gus_62]

SORRY, now i read about Neils Cancer.

He was a very good man!!!

[Author]

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