For me, it's somewhat ironic then that during my early software career (20+ years ago), Fowler's lucid writing helped me through a lot of the anxiety, insecurit

For me, it's somewhat ironic then that during my early software career (20+ years ago), Fowler's lucid writing helped me through a lot of the anxiety, insecurity and impostor syndrome I experienced. His work introduced me to eXtreme Programming, UML, Refactoring and more. Much of the agile tooling used nowadays are a consequence of effort he and the groups he was a part of put forth. The book Analysis Patterns is very underrated IMO and was a breath of fresh air after futzing around with the SAMS Teach Yourself series books that were undeservingly popular back then. I think of Fowler as a virtuoso when it comes to explaining practical software matters. I haven't watched much of his talks, but I've read most of his books and PLoP papers. I'm glad he's going to focus more on writing and helping others with theirs.