Tribute to Idd Salim, a blogger, coder and thinker

“I don't understand why God picks who He's gonna snatch out”

Fade Out

Jean Grae

One day, we will understand why. It took a lifetime to invent this man, three days to disintegrate him, and 23 hours for us to find out. But Idd did not disintegrate like you would think, not in principle, he was a soldier. Soldiers don't disintegrate.

In the field, Idd wore his fatigues and served his time and I am damn proud that in some ways, I got to serve a portion with him. Others served more time with him and knew him better, but this is for the one minute I served with him.

As young as he was, he had lived 1,000 lives. For every hat he wore, he told a different story. For everyone he challenged at pool, he was always going for the win, but there is more to him than just a fun lifestyle mixed with the hubris of African drama.

Idd was genuinely a good guy, and yes, sure, he had his faults like the rest of us. Some, he should have hidden but he didn't, some he should have fixed, but he didn't, but as human nature generally is, some he did not have the ability to fix, and that was him, on some days standing at the right place at right time and on others, wrong place wrong time others. But that is hardly genuine, for Idd, plenty of life was lived, but it wasn't enough.

For the geek to come, Idd was a martial soldier, he could write. For the bloggers, he coined a new term, “Pussy Blogger”, meaning, a blogger who never backed down, and he wasn't. Idd had a particularly severe disdain for pussy bloggers, individuals who could not express the truth, or manipulated the truth to gain commercially or to gain fake acclaim.

When it came to code, Idd was one of the finest, his discipline saw him lay some of the finest code ever written by a human being. He knew the poetry of code. He was by far one of the greatest coders that ever lived and you could never take that from him. But yeah, sure, he flaked out on some projects, but who hasn't.

His passion for code is only rivalled by a soldier in the field, enjoying splendid war, knowing success is inevitable, and his success was not far off, it was an eventuality. He was a passionate coder, an old school coder, something the new breed of coders will never come close to being.

For virtues, really, those are for saints, and he wasn't a saint, he lived fully, a man's man in his own right, an insane man, a troubled soul, a restless rolling rock, a man full of voices in his head. I urge you, I implore you, jump to his blog (iddsalim.com), visit his world, get lost in the words he wrote, disappear into his realm, get to know him, for whatever words I write, they will not do him as much justice as he did to himself.

Reveal yourself to his world and you will discover what legends are made of. The world has lost a legend, one who time and space will never replace.
Idd, we will talk about you often.