Posted by
Hemos
on from the memorializing-the-great-ones dept.
disappear writes "A nice (albeit primarily nontechnical) article about the late, great Rich Stevens is in Salon today. A gentle, sweet look at the author of TCP/IP Illustratedamong other books."
Re:Rich Stevens is Part of Slashdot's Sordid Past
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
I just went and read through the thread. While I couldn't see the posts that had been moderated down, what I did see were lots of posts falling over themselves trying to be all grand and flowery about the whole troll issue; in other words, YHBT. The only truly insightful comment I read was #271 by Lauri Alanko.
Most slashdot readers are not nearly as flowing and elegant in their prose as the like to think. the same thing happened when alec Guiness's death was mentioned here. Lots of writers tried to outdo each other with the most moving oratory. People, it's a guy who acted in some good movies. Or a guy who wrote several really popular Unix books. Maybe you knew him, maybe you didn't. But wasting 5K on a speech that isn't even being broadcast is a little overboard, IMHO. We should be respectful of the dead. We shouldn't need to resort to such dramatic prose. A simple "I knew him, he was great, I'll miss him" ought to suffice. (Besides, it's more in line with the Unix philosophy: smaller statements that combine to form a more powerful whole)
Now watch this post disappear into the sub-ether (along with eddie's sofa)...
Re:I took a class from Stephens
by
CresentCityRon
·
· Score: 2
Hey! I was in that class! I felt lucky to finally get to see "the man" in action and he did not let me down. He always gave his courses and I kept saying "Next time. Next time." Finally that time came.
You know how well he writes? Well his lectures were just as fluid. Master communicatior.
I didn't think at the time that it would be my last chance to take one of his courses.
It would be nice to see a highly respected author take over the series from Mr. Stevens and coninue pumping out
new editions - these texts are too important not to be updated.
I think the only text that really is dated is Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. And since it focuses primarily on POSIX and common functionality among BSD/SYSV systems, it is still a very useful book. Also, some of the dated material on IPC is available in updated form in the UNP Volume II that was released before Steven's death (Which might help explain why Stevens didn't bother re-writing APUE).
As for his other books, the TCP/IP series, from what I know (I actually just started reading it), is only a little dated since IPV6 hadn't been decided yet (though it is fully covered in UNP 2nd edition).
And, as I said, the Unix Network Programming 2nd edition, volumes I and II were rewritten (written) in 1998 and are safely current for a good long time.
Oh, I think that's in Stevens...
by
Uruk
·
· Score: 2
Remember the Hacker's Dictionary entry for Knuth? I think the basic jist of it was that since Knuth is a computing god, and TAOCP contains almost everything, it was known as a very generic hacker answer to tough technical questions, "Oh, I think you can find that in Knuth".
The funny part is that I've heard the same thing about Steven's books. If you ask a really tough question about the nitty gritty of tcp or udp and nobody knows the answer, more likely than not you're going to hear, "Oh, go read UNIX Network Programming by W. Richard Stevens".
So in that way, I suppose Stevens has reached the same amount of acclaim as Knuth, albeit in the network area. His books kicked ass. His death was a great loss.
-- --
Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Re:Rich Stevens is Part of Slashdot's Sordid Past
by
Ross+C.+Brackett
·
· Score: 2
I remember that day clearly. Usually I'm pretty cool about trolls, but that day I just wanted to find that troll and punch him in the face as hard as I could. Thanks for ruining Slashdot, asshole.
It's times like that that lower my faith in the inherent goodness of mankind. How someone could both be that much of a jerk and a coward is beyond me. Regardless of whether or not people were waxing too rhapsidic about him, I know that at least TCP/IP Illustrated vol. I (the only book of his I've read) is a wonderful book and he deserves the highest level of respect for that alone.
Everyone understands the impact people like Rich Stevens made in the lives of Unix programmer. I am glad to see that articles like this pay it due respects.
Though I can't find it offered any more, I took a University of Minnesota course devoted entirely to computer history. It started with the works of Babbage but focused primarily on the era between post-ENIAC and pre-IBM PC. Fascinating stuff. I wish I'd held onto my textbook. I'm surprised these sorts of technical history courses aren't offered more.
--
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Re: Orson Scott Card, Celebrity, Mana
by
weston
·
· Score: 2
The "ersatz mana" part reminds me a little bit of something Orson Scott Card had to say in his book on how to write SF... basically, he said that it's easy to be seduced by people who treat you as if everything you say is clever and fascinating... and your spouse and kids and closest friends can't really compete with that because they know you too well.:) And yet, without the support of people with whom you have substantive relationships, you can lose not only a lot of what provides a high quality of life, but even your ability to perform and relate to others. Mana, if you will, perhaps. (Sometimes I wonder if anyone knows what mana is).
I don't think this applies to Stephens (and I think it is Stephens with a ph, by the way) in the sense that I think he may have abused celebrity this way... but it might help explain why Stephens sister just saw him as her brother. Not such a bad thing, really. At least, for him to work at. Perhaps part of the "dangerous charge" that I've heard mana described as is the threat that those relationships will color yours with a new individual too much. This would fit with what Pirsig wrote in "Lila" (which is where I assume you're taking your info) about going straight to hell once you get famous. Ersatz mana (negative relationship vectors) discoloring relationships at the outset.
Tangentially, I think that community is a bigger part of hacker/open source culture than it is contemporary mainstream, which is why mana or egoboo or whatever you might want to term or call things would be more important within it, but not seen so much outside of it.
I think Card, what with all his talk of individual mystical talents in some of his fiction, would also be intruiged by the statement To everyone who knew him (Stephens), it seemd he cared about the things that mattered most to them. That's a very powerful way to build real relationships with people.
I had the honor of exchanging a couple of emails with Mr. Stevens just a month before he was gone. He told me he was working on APUE (Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment) and it would take 18 months to finish it.
I noticed the unix network programming book in wayne's world II, and I recognized it as a good book, but it rarely occurs to me to think much about the author, which I suppose is a pitty.
The reason fro there being no history in computing science, is that history is quite a difference subject from the science of computing. I'd agree though that some sort of perspective can be very usefull. In general though, as with actors, directors, authors, polititians, musicians and almost all people (like what does RMS stand for anyway) I don't think of names as being the important part.
But then I did find it amusing recently to find that Donald Knuth basically stopped writing his series in order to nit-pick about the formatting through writing Tex. Well, I'm sure that's otherwise commong knowledge.
Re:Rich Stevens is Part of Slashdot's Sordid Past
by
tealover
·
· Score: 2
Here's the link to original Slashdot article that I mentioned. Most of the reprehensible comments were moderated down so they didn't survive the archiving. Tom's comment is #242.
-- --
You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I've never been part of the UNIX community. I just decided one day to learn C; helped debug a MUD, read some books. No classes, no mentors, not really any guidance or intention of taking it any further than a hobby. That was around my sophmore year of college.
It was just last week I found out about Richard Stevens death and I could not believe how much I could feel for a man I had never met. It's been about a year now that I've been religiously stopping in every bookstore I pass to see if they yet have a copy of "UNIX Network Programming vol 3." My girlfriend asked me if there were other books that would cover the same subject matter. She didn't understand.
So I'm on Amazon to see if it's planned to be published and read a review on vol 2 that mentions his passing. I was floored. Just as much as Steve McConnell's books helped me transition from a programmer to a software engineer and engineering manager, Richard Stevens is largely responsible for getting me here in the first place.
I regret never being able to read volume 3. I regret all the learning that I and others will miss out on because the world is without him. Most of all I regret never thinking to send a simple email to thank him for what he has given us all.
IMHO, it's ridiculous that there are no courses in Universities that relate to the history of couputing. I think that every Computer Science major should at least learn who invented the important stuff. Maybe all this technology is still too young to be considered important in the history of the modern world, but TCP/IP did in fact have as much (if not more) influence on the average Joe's everyday life as the theory of relativity...
The article mentions that Unix Network Programming spans three volumes. Last year, when Stevens passed away I remember reading somewhere that someone would look at the state of the third volume to see if it could be published (after some editing).
So what's the story with the applications volume, has it/is it going to be published? Does anyone know?
I took a class from Stephens
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
A couple of years ago I was at the USENIX technical conference in New Orleans. I took a unix network programming tutorial from him.
In just a few hours I went from almost zero knowledge, to being fairly confident of my ability to write decent networking code in C. He was a wonderful teacher. He'll be missed.
Mana - the impacts of people
by
namespan
·
· Score: 3
"It blew my mind," says his sister, Claire Stevens. "I knew he wrote those books, but it never made a dent. I had absolutely no idea that all these people knew and were touched by him." Claire and Richard's wife, Sally, accepted the award on Stevens' behalf. Stevens died on Sept. 1, 1999. He was 48 years old.
I've spent a little bit of time among some polynesian cultural enclaves in the US, and taken a class or two on polynesian culture, and this statement resonated with an explanation of mana
once given to me (by Paul Cox, in case anyone knows who he is...). It goes something like this...
Most people tend to view mana as a mystical energy, and in some senses it both is this way and is viewed this way by polynesian people. But it's not simply a quality existing in the person; it's the result of the sum of the person's relationships -- their community, their family, etc. Part of it is their standing, but part of it is just the existence relationships themselves.
In US culture, it sometimes seems that we discount these things -- or downplay more subtle things. Sure, people fawn over CEOs and those who are rich and celebrity (which Robert Pirsig says is to social relationships what porn is to sex... celebrity=ersatz mana? or real?), but we miss other things. It's interesting to me that Steven's sister could be entirely unaware of her connection with someone who had a powerful relationship with a community. It's interesting how much we see people as individuals, and often fail to realize all the personal vectors that converge on them... or us.
-- Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
It would be nice to see a highly respected author take over the series from Mr. Stevens and coninue pumping out new editions - these texts are too important not to be updated.
I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author, but I would really like to see these books stay the definitive texts in their fields.
It disappeared for a while after his death, but Gary Wright, co-author from TCP/IP Vol II, put Steven's old home page back up. It's a treasure chest of cool info. The FAQ is good reading if you've read any of his books.
Gary still keeps the Stevens spirit alive too
P.S. The site is still running on a BSDI machine and I used vi to update the pages.:-)
Rich Stevens is Part of Slashdot's Sordid Past
by
tealover
·
· Score: 5
Do you remember when he passed and there was this guy making nasty comments about him, basically saying that he was happy that he had died? There were so many outraged people that day. I remember reading a response from Tom Christiansen, who knew Rich very well, who basically wrote a moving comment and stated that he was ashamed about what he was reading.
It was interesting to watch the responses from the multitudes of people who, although they didn't know Rich personally, respected his talents and book writing skills. I myself have learned quite a bit about Unix and Networking from Rich and feel ever indebted.
-- --
You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Slashdot Mirror
Most slashdot readers are not nearly as flowing and elegant in their prose as the like to think. the same thing happened when alec Guiness's death was mentioned here. Lots of writers tried to outdo each other with the most moving oratory. People, it's a guy who acted in some good movies. Or a guy who wrote several really popular Unix books. Maybe you knew him, maybe you didn't. But wasting 5K on a speech that isn't even being broadcast is a little overboard, IMHO. We should be respectful of the dead. We shouldn't need to resort to such dramatic prose. A simple "I knew him, he was great, I'll miss him" ought to suffice. (Besides, it's more in line with the Unix philosophy: smaller statements that combine to form a more powerful whole)
Now watch this post disappear into the sub-ether (along with eddie's sofa)...
Hey! I was in that class! I felt lucky to finally get to see "the man" in action and he did not let me down. He always gave his courses and I kept saying "Next time. Next time." Finally that time came.
You know how well he writes? Well his lectures were just as fluid. Master communicatior.
I didn't think at the time that it would be my last chance to take one of his courses.
I think the only text that really is dated is Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. And since it focuses primarily on POSIX and common functionality among BSD/SYSV systems, it is still a very useful book. Also, some of the dated material on IPC is available in updated form in the UNP Volume II that was released before Steven's death (Which might help explain why Stevens didn't bother re-writing APUE).
As for his other books, the TCP/IP series, from what I know (I actually just started reading it), is only a little dated since IPV6 hadn't been decided yet (though it is fully covered in UNP 2nd edition).
And, as I said, the Unix Network Programming 2nd edition, volumes I and II were rewritten (written) in 1998 and are safely current for a good long time.
Remember the Hacker's Dictionary entry for Knuth? I think the basic jist of it was that since Knuth is a computing god, and TAOCP contains almost everything, it was known as a very generic hacker answer to tough technical questions, "Oh, I think you can find that in Knuth". The funny part is that I've heard the same thing about Steven's books. If you ask a really tough question about the nitty gritty of tcp or udp and nobody knows the answer, more likely than not you're going to hear, "Oh, go read UNIX Network Programming by W. Richard Stevens". So in that way, I suppose Stevens has reached the same amount of acclaim as Knuth, albeit in the network area. His books kicked ass. His death was a great loss.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I remember that day clearly. Usually I'm pretty cool about trolls, but that day I just wanted to find that troll and punch him in the face as hard as I could. Thanks for ruining Slashdot, asshole.
It's times like that that lower my faith in the inherent goodness of mankind. How someone could both be that much of a jerk and a coward is beyond me. Regardless of whether or not people were waxing too rhapsidic about him, I know that at least TCP/IP Illustrated vol. I (the only book of his I've read) is a wonderful book and he deserves the highest level of respect for that alone.
Everyone understands the impact people like Rich Stevens made in the lives of Unix programmer. I am glad to see that articles like this pay it due respects.
Though I can't find it offered any more, I took a University of Minnesota course devoted entirely to computer history. It started with the works of Babbage but focused primarily on the era between post-ENIAC and pre-IBM PC. Fascinating stuff. I wish I'd held onto my textbook. I'm surprised these sorts of technical history courses aren't offered more.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The "ersatz mana" part reminds me a little bit of something Orson Scott Card had to say in his book on how to write SF... basically, he said that it's easy to be seduced by people who treat you as if everything you say is clever and fascinating... and your spouse and kids and closest friends can't really compete with that because they know you too well. :) And yet, without the support of people with whom you have substantive relationships, you can lose not only a lot of what provides a high quality of life, but even your ability to perform and relate to others. Mana, if you will, perhaps. (Sometimes I wonder if anyone knows what mana is).
I don't think this applies to Stephens (and I think it is Stephens with a ph, by the way) in the sense that I think he may have abused celebrity this way... but it might help explain why Stephens sister just saw him as her brother. Not such a bad thing, really. At least, for him to work at. Perhaps part of the "dangerous charge" that I've heard mana described as is the threat that those relationships will color yours with a new individual too much. This would fit with what Pirsig wrote in "Lila" (which is where I assume you're taking your info) about going straight to hell once you get famous. Ersatz mana (negative relationship vectors) discoloring relationships at the outset.
Tangentially, I think that community is a bigger part of hacker/open source culture than it is contemporary mainstream, which is why mana or egoboo or whatever you might want to term or call things would be more important within it, but not seen so much outside of it.
I think Card, what with all his talk of individual mystical talents in some of his fiction, would also be intruiged by the statement To everyone who knew him (Stephens), it seemd he cared about the things that mattered most to them. That's a very powerful way to build real relationships with people.
Tweet, tweet.
Also I asked Gary wright to follow his work.
This was a heavy loss for us Unix programmers.
The reason fro there being no history in computing science, is that history is quite a difference subject from the science of computing. I'd agree though that some sort of perspective can be very usefull. In general though, as with actors, directors, authors, polititians, musicians and almost all people (like what does RMS stand for anyway) I don't think of names as being the important part.
But then I did find it amusing recently to find that Donald Knuth basically stopped writing his series in order to nit-pick about the formatting through writing Tex. Well, I'm sure that's otherwise commong knowledge.
-Daniel
There isn't any mention of Microsoft and Al Gore inventing the internet and TCP/IP from scratch.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Here's the link to original Slashdot article that I mentioned. Most of the reprehensible comments were moderated down so they didn't survive the archiving. Tom's comment is #242.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I've never been part of the UNIX community. I just decided one day to learn C; helped debug a MUD, read some books. No classes, no mentors, not really any guidance or intention of taking it any further than a hobby. That was around my sophmore year of college.
It was just last week I found out about Richard Stevens death and I could not believe how much I could feel for a man I had never met. It's been about a year now that I've been religiously stopping in every bookstore I pass to see if they yet have a copy of "UNIX Network Programming vol 3." My girlfriend asked me if there were other books that would cover the same subject matter. She didn't understand.
So I'm on Amazon to see if it's planned to be published and read a review on vol 2 that mentions his passing. I was floored. Just as much as Steve McConnell's books helped me transition from a programmer to a software engineer and engineering manager, Richard Stevens is largely responsible for getting me here in the first place.
I regret never being able to read volume 3. I regret all the learning that I and others will miss out on because the world is without him. Most of all I regret never thinking to send a simple email to thank him for what he has given us all.
I did have a mentor, we just never met.
Rest in peace, Richard.
-- ShadyG
Nerd Rock In Progress
IMHO, it's ridiculous that there are no courses in Universities that relate to the history of couputing. I think that every Computer Science major should at least learn who invented the important stuff. Maybe all this technology is still too young to be considered important in the history of the modern world, but TCP/IP did in fact have as much (if not more) influence on the average Joe's everyday life as the theory of relativity...
--- Worst tagline ever.
The article mentions that Unix Network Programming spans three volumes. Last year, when Stevens passed away I remember reading somewhere that someone would look at the state of the third volume to see if it could be published (after some editing). So what's the story with the applications volume, has it/is it going to be published? Does anyone know?
In just a few hours I went from almost zero knowledge, to being fairly confident of my ability to write decent networking code in C. He was a wonderful teacher. He'll be missed.
"It blew my mind," says his sister, Claire Stevens. "I knew he wrote those books, but it never made a dent. I had absolutely no idea that all these people knew and were touched by him." Claire and Richard's wife, Sally, accepted the award on Stevens' behalf. Stevens died on Sept. 1, 1999. He was 48 years old.
I've spent a little bit of time among some polynesian cultural enclaves in the US, and taken a class or two on polynesian culture, and this statement resonated with an explanation of mana
once given to me (by Paul Cox, in case anyone knows who he is...). It goes something like this...
Most people tend to view mana as a mystical energy, and in some senses it both is this way and is viewed this way by polynesian people. But it's not simply a quality existing in the person; it's the result of the sum of the person's relationships -- their community, their family, etc. Part of it is their standing, but part of it is just the existence relationships themselves.
In US culture, it sometimes seems that we discount these things -- or downplay more subtle things. Sure, people fawn over CEOs and those who are rich and celebrity (which Robert Pirsig says is to social relationships what porn is to sex... celebrity=ersatz mana? or real?), but we miss other things. It's interesting to me that Steven's sister could be entirely unaware of her connection with someone who had a powerful relationship with a community. It's interesting how much we see people as individuals, and often fail to realize all the personal vectors that converge on them... or us.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author, but I would really like to see these books stay the definitive texts in their fields.
It disappeared for a while after his death, but Gary Wright, co-author from TCP/IP Vol II, put Steven's old home page back up. It's a treasure chest of cool info. The FAQ is good reading if you've read any of his books.
Gary still keeps the Stevens spirit alive too
Do you remember when he passed and there was this guy making nasty comments about him, basically saying that he was happy that he had died? There were so many outraged people that day. I remember reading a response from Tom Christiansen, who knew Rich very well, who basically wrote a moving comment and stated that he was ashamed about what he was reading.
It was interesting to watch the responses from the multitudes of people who, although they didn't know Rich personally, respected his talents and book writing skills. I myself have learned quite a bit about Unix and Networking from Rich and feel ever indebted.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to