Technology journalist Darryl K. Taft led a long and successful career at several first-rank tech publications and was a highly respected professional with a legacy of thousands of articles. After a short illness, Taft died August 3, 2026. He was 67. For more than 40 years, Taft covered foundational software concepts as they were still developing, including development, cloud computing, AI, DevOps, and open source. He was a gentle giant in a field and is remembered by fellow journalists, communications leaders, and technologists as much for his interviewing talent and writing ability as for his care, curiosity, generosity, and kindness.Dr. James Gosling, an IT legend known in the business as the father of Java – the Sun Microsystems protocol that connects most electronic devices on the planet – once said he determined whether a person was good to work with by whether he enjoyed having dinner with them. Turns out that Taft was a favorite tablemate of his.Before he was a journalist, Taft was a programmer and worked in banking IT and technical documentation. That background gave him a rare ability to make complex tech concepts easy for anyone to understand. He held significant roles at major publications such as eWEEK, TechTarget, and, most recently, The New Stack, where he served as news editor starting in 2021. He wrote and edited thousands of articles and covered many big players, including Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, IBM, Nvidia, and Red Hat.Industry professionals, from peers to executives, admired his grit, curiosity, and calm, humble demeanor. He was known for being a mentor and a master at building relationships with sources. Colleagues remembered him for his classic, old-school reporting style. He always prioritized deep, well-sourced stories that focused on the people (developers and architects) behind the technology.A native of Baltimore, he interviewed industry leaders from hundreds of companies. He was a regular presence at major developer conferences, such as Microsoft Build, KubeCon, Google Cloud Next, Red Hat Summit, and many other enterprise IT events. His work has also been published in Government Computer News, SearchSoftwareQuality, SearchAppArchitecture, TheServerSide, Computer Weekly (syndicated), and The Code Project (syndicated).Below are remembrances of Darryl collected by staff at The New Stack.Alex Williams co-founded The New Stack in 2014. “I looked up to Darryl. I first met him when I started covering enterprise tech, circa 2008. He had a calmness to him and a deep understanding of the developer ecosystem he covered, dating back to the 1990s,” Williams writes. “Darryl had a gentle soul and a reporter’s instincts. The combination served us all well. People loved him. He cultivated those relationships, developing excellent sources. He’d get fresh stories all the time. Those stories were well-sourced, thoroughly reported, and clearly written. He made it look simple.“He was one of the great tech journalists of the past 30 years. I feel lucky I knew him and worked with him so closely.”“He was one of the great tech journalists of the past 30 years. I feel lucky I knew him and worked with him so closely.”Heather Joslyn was features editor at The New Stack from 2021 to 2023 and editor-in-chief from 2023 to 2026, and worked with Taft daily.“Darryl and I joined the staff of The New Stack at about the same time, and we began working more closely together once I moved into the editor-in-chief role in November 2023. I quickly became aware, especially as Covid-era travel restrictions lifted and I began attending tech conferences, how revered and respected Darryl was in the tech journalism field. He was commonly referred to as a ‘giant’ in our field, one who was covering the modern tech industry when it was still in its infancy.“He loved his work and brought the grit and curiosity of an old-school reporter to covering a field that demands both. He was not only great at finding stories, but had a tremendous style and care with words. “What I will remember most fondly of Darryl is a road trip we took down to Raleigh, North Carolina, last year for All Things Open. TNS is an all-remote company, but he and I happen to live in the same city, his hometown of Baltimore. Darryl could be a man of few words, so I was worried about long silences filling my Honda during the roughly 10-hour round trip.“Not to worry. He was downright chatty during the trip, and the radio proved a potent icebreaker. When Johnnie Taylor’s 1968 hit “Who’s Making Love” (“…to your old lady/while you were out makin’ love?”) played, Darryl told me how Baltimore kids sang the song to taunt the National Guard troops who patrolled the city after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. And I’ll always remember our enthusiastic but off-key harmonizing to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” “Darryl earned a lot of R-E-S-P-E-C-T from us at TNS and around the tech world. He’ll be very missed.”Taft (front, right) with colleagues from The New Stack. (Photo: Colleen Coll) Richard MacManus, currently head of editorial at Latent Space, and Taft were senior editors at The New Stack for several years in this decade. “I’d seen his name quite a lot in the best-known IT publications from the ’90s on. As I got to know Darryl as a colleague, I began to appreciate his humble wisdom and old-school tech journalism chops. I was always secretly thrilled when he said he liked one of my stories — it felt like an older brother nodding his head in approval.”“The story that best sums up his quality was an interview he conducted in May 2025 with Dr. Gosling. The post was a 30-year retrospective of Java and, as you’d expect from Darryl, there was plenty of technical depth and nuance to it. But what I enjoyed the most was how he brought a very human dimension to the story by telling us about his personal encounters with Gosling at a San Francisco crab restaurant. ‘Gosling once told me that he liked to work with people he would enjoy having dinner with,’” MacManus writes. “Well, reading that made me wish I could sit down with Darryl and talk tech over a large plate of roasted Dungeness crab.”Robin Bender Ginn, Executive Director at OpenJS Foundation and a former director at Microsoft, writes, “Darryl was one of my favorite reporters, and I feel lucky to have known him for nearly 20 years … Darryl chronicled the people and changes that shaped open source with insight and a deep understanding of the community. He was always thoughtful, kind, and genuinely a pleasure to be around.”Chris J. Preimesberger, former editor-in-chief of eWEEK and a TNS colleague of Taft who worked with him for more than 20 years, said, “DKT had high credibility in writing about IT hardware and software development because he was a former programmer who studied trends incessantly. He could write and edit tech language as well as anybody I knew, and he used that ability to explain technology clearly to his readers. He was one of the best editor/reporter/analysts in the business and will be missed.”Andrew Tillery, Senior Marketing Manager for The New Stack, began working with Taft in 2020. “Darryl made you feel like you could share anything with him, which is one reason he was such a great news editor.”“Darryl had a magnetism about him. Sometimes it was a reluctant magnetism on his part, but people were always drawn to him,” Tillery writes. “Darryl made you feel like you could share anything with him, which is one reason he was such a great news editor. But even those who didn’t know his role felt like they could approach him, and they were always met with kind words (and the best smile if you could get a laugh out of him).”Taft (second from left) in 2025 with colleagues from The New Stack. (Photo: Andrew Tillery)Susan Hall, a former editor at The New Stack, writes, “Darryl consistently produced our highest-performing content. He was incredibly knowledgeable and could make complex topics easy for everyone. He had his finger on the pulse of the tech world, especially programming languages and changes in coding practices. On the occasions that I was editing his copy, he good-naturedly answered all my questions, no matter how stupid they were. He was just a good sort and will be sorely missed.”Larry Carvalho, research director at IDC and industry analyst at RobustCloud, began working with Taft in the mid-2010s. “Darryl always stood out for his easygoing demeanor and his ability to connect with people at conferences. I knew he would make a strong impression wherever he went and never hesitated to recommend him for opportunities,” Carvalo writes.Adrian Bridgwater, a TNS contributor, worked alongside Taft at tech shows for years. “He had a quiet classiness that he didn’t use to climb the social ladder. Darryl’s smile took a long time to form on his lips, but when it did, it was well worth that wait.”“He had a quiet classiness that he didn’t use to climb the social ladder. Darryl’s smile took a long time to form on his lips, but when it did, it was well worth that wait.”Alicia V. Nieva-Woodgate, a longtime PR and marketing executive, remembers Taft as “an incredibly talented journalist, and he was always kind and polite, and insightful. You could always count on him to tell you why a story didn’t interest him, or if it did, the depth of the story he would dive into. Clients always walked away impressed by how prepped he was for an interview, the depth of his questions, and his knowledge of tech. He left an impact on all who worked with him.”Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, journalist and TNS contributor: “When I first met Darryl in 1987, I was a freelance writer, and he was already an editor at Government Computer News. As the years went by, we often worked together at one publication after another, including ones from Ziff Davis, IDG, and, most recently, The New Stack. “He was a grand guy and a wonderful journalist. I’ll miss him. I think everyone who ever had the pleasure of working with him will miss him.”Nick Lucchesi, editor-in-chief at The New Stack: “While I only worked with Darryl in 2026, a few things became apparent quickly. The first is the care he brought to his work, welcome in an era where speed is often prioritized over quality. His focus on conducting interviews that yielded illustrative anecdotes that brought highly technical concepts to life was also a valuable service to our readers.“During one of our several weekly chats, he told me how he was identified as ‘King of the Pregnant Pause’ in a reporter dossier assembled by the comms department at a major technology company headquartered in the Pacific Northwest. “As you’d expect, word got back to Darryl that his disarming style — a brilliant quality for someone in our line of work — had made it into this dossier, as had his royal-sounding title. And as someone with fresh memories of a job panel interview with him, it was a deserved nickname. When Darryl was interviewing an engineer or an executive for a story, his tendency to pause a beat after a response had considerable effect: It would often spur the interviewee to share more information — probably more than the comms department intended. “’I wasn’t trying to mess with anyone; I was thinking of my next question,’ Darryl told me as he was sharing this story one weekday morning this spring. I believed him. That was just Darryl’s style; not a tactic. For me, that story captures some of the best of Darryl: Comfortable in his own skin. Knowledgeable. Curious. Careful. And always trying to get the best story possible.“I will also add that he was extremely proud of his son and the life he saw his son build for himself. He took extra care to look after the writers who reported to him. And he was a reliable, generous colleague. He is missed greatly.”Taft leaves behind a reputation for kindness, sharp intellect, and being a wonderful person to share dinner with. He is survived by his son, Elliott, and his partner, Valarie Smith.A public viewing ahead of Taft’s funeral service will be held between 2 and 6 p.m. on Sunday, August 23, 2026, at Vaughn C. Greene Funeral Home, 8728 Liberty Road, in Randallstown, Maryland. You can view the livestream of Taft’s funeral service at 10:30 a.m. Eastern on Monday, August 24, 2026.If you have a remembrance of Darryl you’d like to share for consideration to be included here, please email nick@thenewstack.io and include your name, your relationship to Darryl, a phone number where you can be reached, and any remembrances of 300 words or fewer. They may be published here at a future date.The post TNS journalist Darryl K. Taft leaves a legacy of respected work and quiet integrity appeared first on The New Stack.