I think I had vaguely registered that he'd left. I'm not following CM that closely these days.
I used ClockworkMod recovery for a couple of years, and particularly liked that 2.5.0.7 for the Desire could handle both Amend and Edify scripting. I also used Helium so that I could transfer some app data to my One before rooting it (but since then I've had Titanium back, so it was redundant and uninstalled).
ROM Manager I never got into. It did nothing I couldn't do with a web browser and a custom recovery, and caused problems on a lot of devices which meant that I never recommended it.