Remembering Rainer Grimm

published at 09.10.2025 22:42 by Jens Weller
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Rainer Grimm passed away on Monday, as you can read in his ALS Journey entry on his blog. I want to express my heartfelt condolences to his family.

Rainer was a good friend and in the beginning of Meeting C++ also an early mentor. His contributions to C++ have been exceptional with his blog, books and talks. He has spoken at every single Meeting C++ conference, and is the only speaker to achieve this. He will be missed and leaves a void behind in our community.

His death comes to me sudden, and as a surprise. We had plans to record his talk for Meeting C++ 2025 next week. When I've visited him in May I did meet him with his new wheelchair, and we were speaking about his plans and how he was looking forward to being able to move around with eye tracking in his wheelchair. How he spoke about using two different voice to text programs, one for german and one for english. About his C++26 book we talked. I've visited him through out his ALS Journey a few times, and always met an optimistic Rainer Grimm. In May it seemed he was about to reach some of his goals with his setup in regards of being able to improve his quality of life and be able to focus more on the things that mattered to him in the recent years: ALS and C++. Through out my visits I also got to meet his wife Beatrix, my condolences to you.

During this visit in May I've also met Cippi, and he talked about his plans to send her around the world as an ambassador and his messenger. Raising awareness about ALS. I'm looking forward to host Cippi at Meeting C++ in Berlin in just 4 weeks.

Lets also talk about ALS, you might remember this disease from the ice bucket challenge years ago. Most countries have organizations that handle ALS research and care, for Germany that is the ALS Ambulanz by the Charité. This is where you can find out more about ALS and a good way to donate locally. ALS is a deadly and still not well understood disease which slowly destroys the motor neurons of either first or second degree. There is no cure or medication that slows or holds progress of ALS. Rainer talked about how he had the luck that he did not loose his speach, that he was still able to talk. That to him the progression seemed to be slower than compared to others. In this context I want to thank Jason Turner for dedicating his 500+ km pieterpad trail hike to support Rainer Grimms effort to raise awareness about ALS. I've joined him in June when this path leads through the woods I'm often hiking in.

But we should remember Rainer for his contributions to C++. His blog has been one of the most active with in the community, my RSS reader counts 689 entries, and I'm sure a few are missing. Plus that he published in english and german. As a book author and trainer Rainer enjoyed writing and produced a large body of work in regards to the modern C++ standards. This large library of his knowledge let later to his mentoring program, which he worked on in the last years. In March 2024 Rainer Grimm was my guest in an AMA style interview.

Contributions to Meeting C++

As I've mentioned earlier, Rainer Grimm spoke every year at Meeting C++. He was one of the first to reach out to me after Meeting C++ was announced in late June 2012. These were his latest contributions:

His next contribution would have been The data-parallel types (SIMD) library in C++26 at Meeting C++ 2025. I don't want to replace him with another speaker, and for the moment favor playing his C++26 overview talk at the conference in this slot instead.

Thanks for your contributions to C++ Rainer Grimm, you will be remembered as one of the great authors of the Modern C++ era.

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