Since 1986 he worked as software engineer, consultant, research assistant and scholar at Stanford University.
He was author of several books, of many magazine articles and conference papers and was awarded with several patents.
His work concentrated on object oriented technology, design patterns and software modeling.
John Vlissides died on Thanksgiving 2005 (November 24, 2005) following a struggle with complications from a brain tumor.
Since then, there has been a steady inflow of contributions located at the WikiWikiWeb page for Vlissides.