In Memory of Jason Rudolph
My friend and former GitHub coworker Jason Rudolph died in May 2026.
With the consent of his family, I’m writing about some of my memories of Jason.
Platform
I first properly (and in meatspace) met Jason when I joined GitHub’s “Platform” team. That team was a few (unreasonably excellent) engineers who maintained and improved GitHub’s API. As almost all features ended up touching the API in some way, the role could have easily become a gatekeeping one. Instead, Jason turned it into primarily an educational one.
Jason didn’t really say no to people. He would take (sometimes huge) amounts of time and effort explaining and teaching them how and why to do things a better way.
This didn’t just extend to GitHub’s API but also basic things like language. I remember the first time I incorrectly used the word “less” rather than “fewer”. Jason delicately and politely contradicted me and explained the difference and how to remember it:
fewer are countable items, less is for quantities
What was so memorable (I think of Jason almost every time I say “fewer”) about this interaction was that he did what I had previously considered impossible. He gave unsolicited feedback in a way that made clear that he really cared about excellence and helping me achieve it. As someone who didn’t love unsolicited feedback at the time, he also did it in an incredibly kind, sensitive and gentle way.
Emails
Another great Jasonism I have quoted many times:
Checking your emails is not your job. Doing your job may require checking your emails.
Email is somewhat irrelevant here but it can be extended more widely to almost anything done by engineers:
- writing code
- testing
- project planning
This came on the back of conversations about “Inbox Zero” and other email methodologies.
It was also counterintuitive to me at the time because Jason was so organised and efficient. This was a lesson (that took me too long to learn) about efficiency. Efficiency is not about doing everything quickly; it’s about doing the right things steadily.
Testing
Jason was always a strong advocate for excellent automated testing at GitHub. He wrote a great series about testing anti-patterns that is as relevant today as when he wrote it.
100% coverage is meaningless without other supporting habits and practices
Again, Jason did a great job here of taking the “holy grail of testing” (100% coverage) and pointing out why that’s not the actual goal.
Dogs
Jason loved his dog, Abby, and died with her at his side.
When my dog, Lucy, was a puppy, I was a rigid adherent to “positive reinforcement only” dog training. This worked great except for her habit of sitting in front of the TV and barking at us whenever it was on.
Jason, in his usual pragmatism, gently pointed out that he had found:
dogs hate mint breath spray
A few sprays later near Lucy, she stopped barking at us while we watched TV. To this day, over a decade later, just showing her the spray will stop her barking.
Cancer
I don’t really know when Jason was diagnosed. We last hung out a couple of years ago when he did a world tour seeing a bunch of his friends. We had a lovely chat in a pub in Edinburgh and chatted about diving, software, GitHub, dogs and lifting.
I briefly wished in hindsight I’d known he was dying but I think I understand it better now. Our conversation would have probably been pretty different, even if neither of us wanted that.
From the little I know, he planned his final years in the thoughtful, counterintuitive, kind and pragmatic way he seemed to me to approach everything else.
Goodbye Jason. I’ll miss you.
Jason asked that his friends and family donate to The Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation. I did and, if you can afford it, please do so too.
Written by me, not an AI. I solicit AI suggestions and apply only when I agree (often I don't).
