W. Richard Stevens Passes On

Anti-Anti-Perl-Bigot-Bigots by Seumas · 1999-09-04 03:05 · Score: 2

And no right to life, free-speech or work for anti-anti-perl-bigot-bigots either, while we're at it?

There's a reason you're hiding being an Anonymous Coward shield.

Being an elitist zealot may impress your mad-hacker-script-kiddie friends on IRC, but a point comes at which you have to realize a person for their humanity and not their superfluous opinions on technology.

The guy wasn't fond of Perl -- it wasn't like he was encouraging slave-labor in Indonesia or funding slave-trading and supplying nuclear arms to third-world nations.

The open-source movement, if nothing else, is an effort to recognize the value of differing opinions, needs, thoughts, and the strength of humanity -- so show some.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com

I hate that euphemism... by nstrug · 1999-09-04 00:04 · Score: 2

...what's wrong with saying 'died'?

Nick

--
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran

Re:I hate that euphemism... by dattaway · 1999-09-04 00:28 · Score: 2

..what's wrong with saying 'died'?

His work didn't die, but will be with us forever. Its not "dead," but immortalized. :)

From his Preface (sort of a Eulogy) by craw · 1999-09-04 03:10 · Score: 5

When somebody passes away, you should either speak of the good things about him/her, or otherwise keep your mouth shut. With that in mind, I would like to quote from his last book. This was in the preface.

I produced camera-ready copy of the book (PostScript), which was then typeset for the final book. The formatting system used was James Clark's wonderful groff package, on a SparcStation running Solaris 2.6. (Reports of troff's death are greatly exagerated.) I typed in all 138,897 words using the vi editor, created the 72 illustrations using the gpic program (using many of Gary Wright's macros), produced the 35 tables using the gtbl program, performed all the indexing (using a set of awk scripts written by Jon Bentley and Brian Kernighan), and did the final page layout. Dave Hanson's loom program, the GNU indent program, and some scripts by Gary Wright were used to include the 8,046 lines of C source code in the book.

I just had a big smile on my face after I first read this. Stevens was Unix to the very core.

Re:From his Preface (sort of a Eulogy) by Rick+Richardson · 1999-09-05 06:02 · Score: 3

I had a nice email convo with Rich just after
TCP/IP Illustrated came out. We both attended
University of Michigan and both used the MTS
in the early 70's.

Here's a piece of the email convo to demonstrate
just the kind of guy Rick was...

> As a troff die-hard myself (I'm the author of the JetRoff
> laserjet backend for ditroff), this raised my curiosity
> to a such a level that I had to write. You use troff
> so well in this book that I wonder, would it be possible
> to get the actual troff, tbl, pic, whatever source for
> say the first couple of chapters, just for my own
> personal education and gratification? I'd love to see
> how camera ready troff is written for an actual book.

Hi. I've seen your name for years in the troff newsgroups. Didn't
you used to be in New Jersey?

Here's a shar file for Chapters 2 and 3, along with their pic files.
I also use lots of shell scripts and awk programs to automate things.
For example, the automatic numbering of figures and the like is done
using awk. Rather than try to explain what it all does, take a look
and just ask questions if you have any. I use the -ms macros, with
numerous additions of my own, and a little tinkering. Troff comments
"foo" are where I put in page breaks at the end--I normally put in
each page break by hand when doing the page layout. All the .ix
macros are also index entries that I put in by hand at the end.

Naturally, please don't redistribute these files at all. Also, thanks
for the kind words about the book--glad you enjoy it and find it useful.

Rich Stevens
Re:From his Preface (sort of a Eulogy) by craw · 1999-09-05 08:30 · Score: 2

Thanks for your comment. Now I feel even worse. I never met the man although his books and the attitude contain in them were very good. I'm a scientist, not a professional programmer. As such I greatly appreciate an education source of info that is concise and lucid. As a person that has been working on Unix systems for about 15 yrs, I can also appreciate the trials and tribulations of mastering the mysteries of troff and other pre-historic formatting languages. Hell, I started out with Script, IIRC that came out of Waterloo.
Someone once asked me to document how to use one of my kluge programs. I told him that it would take me as much time to write the documentation in troff as it took me write the program. My ability to write concise and proper test is pathetic. To have to go in an edit the test is difficult.
Thank you for your reply. As I initially stated, I feel even worse after reading your reply and some of the other posts on this story.

Way to go! by Evro · 1999-09-04 22:35 · Score: 2

I see, you're in a bad mood, so you get to ruin everybody else's Slashdot experience. I'm sorry you didn't want to see people grieve over the death of someone they respected. Maybe when your mom dies or something you'll get some condolence cards describing how everybody wants to jizz on her face. Won't that be nice?

And I'm glad you've made some of the highest-ranked AC posts ever. That really makes you a good person. Or, more likely, you really know how to suckup to the moderators. Congratulations.

--
rooooar

Just one thing to say by grappler · 1999-09-05 00:38 · Score: 2

This is a sad, sad day for Slashdot.

--
Vidi, Vici, Veni

Its just a nut in the tree by dattaway · 1999-09-04 09:33 · Score: 2

No, I have found AC posting can be useful except that we now have a bandwidth hijacker gone postal and carpet bombing the posts. Let's say if his identity could be tracked down within a few hundred miles, I might visit the knucklehead or his peers and ask what's up. I would imagine he would be sure to retaliate if he could.

This is like someone showing up at a funeral and spitting on the grave while others who wish to look at the contributions of a person. Its distracting and makes me think about what could make a person so detatched.

Good bye, Rich. Good riddance, Slashdot. by Tom+Christiansen · 1999-09-04 09:43 · Score: 5

In my nearly two decades of habitation upon the Arpanet and its descendents, never before have I ever had the misfortune to witness so distressing a thread of messages as these. This unspeakably sickening invective against so kind a man, a man whom most of you never even knew, can have no other effect than to boggle the mind, wound the heart, and taint the soul with a nauseous stench.

Rich was always gentleman: pleasant, helpful, and courteous. Despite his fame and his skill, no prima donna was he. He was never bitter nor spiteful, never arrogant nor condescending. His humor and his insights inspired many of us, and not merely in our programming.

In the last few years that I came to know Rich a bit better as we shared a meal at random conferences scattered about the globe, I was always impressed by his irrepentantly positive attitude. Whatever the tale he told, whether a personal one relating to his children or his delightful rediscovery of the piano, a professional one related to programming and computers, or simply some incidental anecdote, that tale he presented with a childlike delight and glee. Rich displayed a perpetually positive attitude rare in a man even half his age. He was uplifting merely to be around.

Never was I so honored as on that day when Rich lamented not bringing his Perl Cookbook with him so he could get my autograph on it. I was deeply touched and completely surprised. Rich is acknowledged in the credits for his indirect help in preparing that book from our discussions of troff and systems programming matters. Despite his good taste and obvious skill, he had been for some time using Perl for various daily jobs. It's true that Rich had minor issues with Perl's cleanliness, but these were subsumed by the practical concerns of simply getting a job done easily and quickly. In short, it worked and he used it, and he was thankful it saved him time. The very things that the HTML crowd find hardest with Perl -- its Unix roots and proclivities -- Rich found immediately familiar and obvious. I am proud that I had ever so small a part in helping out a man who had tremendously helped me and thousands of others.

It is with nothing less than complete shock and surpassing shame that I have read here what so many insensitive malcontents have cruelly and unjustly scrawled. Doubtless these are the same twisted perverts who torture kittens and kick pregnant mothers, a sickness upon this medium and this planet. I hope these sociopaths find help soon, or at least remove themselves from the company of men and the gene pool.

Forget not this one inescapable fact: that where Rich has gone, so too inexorably goes each and every one of you walking shadows, and tragically sooner than you dare fathom. May you be remembered in the same measure as have you remembered those who preceded you down that lonesome path to dusty death.

It does not take a particularly compassionate and sensitive person to be sickened and hurt by these inexpressibly horrible postings. It takes nothing but a decent and caring human being, the sort of which we seem to have so few of these days--and today, to our loss, one fewer.

It's more than that by Zico · 1999-09-04 10:04 · Score: 3

It's not just the need to inject Linux into every single topic that's annoying. What's troubling (and disheartening for people concerned with the current state of humanity) is the huge number of attitudes expressed at Slashdot with attitudes like:

"I hope TrollTech goes out of business because they won't release QT under the GPL."
"Yay, NT support for the Alpha is being dropped and more than 100 programmers are losing their jobs."
In this thread on Mr. Stevens's death, the announcement that all of his books have been scanned/ripped and will be posted on some IRC warez channel.
"I wish someone would kill Bill Gates."
The continuous venom and hoping by KDE and GNOME fanatics that the other side will end up as a complete failure. Plenty of people seem to care more that KDE turns out to be a failure than they do that GNOME actually succeeds, and vice versa.
"Now that BSD has changed their licensing terms, let's GPL it! HAHAHAHA!"
"You use platform X, so you're an idiot!"

I honestly do believe that there's a relatively high number of people here that have damaged psyches and could use some mental help. Stuff like this makes me think of Jon Katz's Hellmouth series and wonder if these people suffered abuse when they were younger which turned them into such despicable human beings. No matter how much it might seem like a short-term fix, cutting down other people instead of improving yourself will never give you the peace that you seek.

This site can be an entertaining read, but when you look at the big picture, it can be one of the most depressing sites on the web.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Irreplaceable by Chris+Siegler · 1999-09-04 10:49 · Score: 2

I've had hours to think about it now, and I'm even more depressed by his death than before. So I went to his homepage and dug around some. His FAQ is interesting. My favorite excerpt:

I really believe that my background is fundamental to the success of UNP and my other books. That is, I was not one of the developers at Berkeley or AT&T, so the writing of UNP was not a "memory dump". Everything that is in the book I had to dig out of somewhere and understand myself. This process of digging up the details and learning how things work leads down many side streets and to many dead ends, but is fundamental (I think) to understanding something new. Many times in my books I have set out to write how something works, thinking I know how it works, only to write some test programs that lead me to things that I never knew. I try to convey some of these missteps in my books, as I think seeing the wrong solution to a problem (and understanding why it is wrong) is often as informative as seeing the correct solution.

Surf around some more and you find out he loved to ski (he used to have a GIF of an old ski pass on his home page), he was a pilot, got his Ph.D while working a full time job at Kitt Peak observatory, has lived in Zambia, Utah, New Mexico, Virginia, Michigan, Oklahoma, Georgia, California, Arizona, Connecticut, and South Africa.

And among all the people who understood Unix systems programming and networking in 1988, this was the guy who had the courage to actually sit down and start writing his first book, Unix Network Programming. Just think of all the people who didn't write that book. He was a unique mix of talented engineer,programmer, and author. It's really no suprise that nobody beat him to writing APUE and his TCP/IP series.

And you thought Linus was unique.

Re:Newspaper Notice by SEWilco · 1999-09-06 14:19 · Score: 2

I suspected there was some sort of corporate relationship between the systems, I just didn't look for it. Particularly as the Star's web page called the classifieds by yet another name. But it was also possible that the same obit was sent by the family to several places.

W. Richard Stevens by evilpenguin · 1999-09-06 18:18 · Score: 2

W. Richard Stevens was that rarity in modern humanity: a gentleman and a scholar. I am deeply saddend to see the number of people posting hateful comments about this man because he didn't like perl and he didn't like linux. I can assure you that professor Stevens knew what he was talking about and had reasons for those statements. The fact that one might not agree with them is not a justification for assailing a man's character or intelligence.

In 1993 I was writing some networking applications software for RS-6000's at a large IT shop. I was, like almost everyone else in the industry, working from W. Richard Steven's excellent "Unix Network Programming." I was testing code examples from that book and found (to my mild concern) that Steven's code to run-time detect whether you were on a system V or a BSD style system (for signal handling) was returning true for both cases on the version of AIX I was on.

I was pretty sure that AIX wasn't so deviant that such standard stuff as is found in that book would not work, but I'm certainly not too proud to seek expert advice. I hopped on over to USENET (web? What web?) and posted a question basically asking if Stevens' code would work on AIX. Later that day I got an e-mail from Stevens himself with details on what works, what doesn't and why (almost all of it worked, BTW). In 1993 the 'net wasn't quite the sea of raging lunatics that it is today, but even then USENET was full of loudmouthed know-nothings. That Stevens would take the time to review newsgroups and help out an indivdual questioner says something about the man.

His contribution to the modern net is difficult to overstate. I would venture that almost every serious developer of Internet applications (esp. those who were here before the explosion of the WWW) learned his or her trade from Stevens (and Comer, and a handful of others). Whatever he thought of Linux and Perl, or about NAFTA or any other damned thing, he was a knowledgeable and generous man. Such a man is worth ten thousand foul-mouthed AC's. Shame on you.

On moderation by Lauri+Alanko · 1999-09-04 12:33 · Score: 2

Hello. This, like many other comments here, is meta-discussion, and thus not really on topic. I wish there was a better place for it, but I cannot think of any. Pardon.

I don't find the several derogatory messages appearing here a disastrous problem. Practically all of them have been moderated down, and I must commend the moderators for such prompt action. Everyone is aware, hopefully, that at threshold -1 you do get to see utter crap. This time there is more of it, mostly because of a few persistent flamebaiters. However, as always, you get what you ask for, if you don't want to see the worst of the worst, keep your threshold higher. The moderation system works, in my opinion, remarkably well in general.

However, please, people, do not feed the flames by replying to completely obvious trolls. Trust the moderators to do their job. Flaming flamers is just a waste of mutual resources, most notably reading time.

I suspect that starting IP banning would not be worthwhile. It would open yet another can of worms about censorship, and IP banning is not a foolproof protection against misbehaving individuals in any case. Like I said, I find the current moderation system doing its job commendably well. The only problem that I see that the comments on this story have revealed is that people who really see effort to abuse the system may overwhelm, or at least overload the moderators, and it must be frustrating for them. I cannot really see an obvious way to remedy the situation.

There is one thing that I actually am worried about, though, perhaps reflecting the frustration of the moderators. There seem to be several comments that have been moderated down, that I for one really don't see deserving it. Please, moderators, remember that you should only consider the topicality, language, and information content of a comment, not the opinions it expresses.

In addition to the hordes of (quite appropriately downmoderated) comments mainly concerned with bodily fluids, there are some comments which merely criticize the late Mr. Stevens and point out that something good may, in their opinion, result from his demise. I find it most unsettling to see posts such as these, not blatantly offensive and quite topical, moderated down. Yes, the dead should be respected, because it's unfair to abuse someone who cannot defend himself. But that doesn't mean that one should suddenly only start saying positive things about the dead. People have a right to their opinions unbiased by their subject's death, and as long as they are expressed with dignity, and are topical, I see no reason to moderate them down, even if the moderators are offended by them.

Like some comments have already pointed out, had Bill Gates died, it's doubtful that comments remarking that his demise might be positive for Linux would get moderated down. As a more extreme example, consider the phrases "Good riddance, Hitler", and "Good riddance, Stevens", uttered right after the deaths of the respective individuals. If you are to be impartial, you should moderate both the same way.

Actually, I cannot help being reminded of the Daria episode "The Misery Chick" where a local celebrity dies, and Daria, being the only one criticizing him after his death, gets shunned by everyone. I wouldn't like to compare Slashdot readership to the students of Lawndale High...

Lauri Alanko
la@iki.fi

PS. I wouldn't be at all surprised if JonKatz were to write a piece about this story, and all this discussion that followed, and again try to psychoanalyze the readership of slashdot..

Eulogy from a humble student by Mike+Gleason · 1999-09-04 14:25 · Score: 4

Richard,

Simply put, you're the one guy in the world in whose presence I would have been in awe of. I wouldn't bother asking for Michael Jordan's autograph, didn't shed a tear for JFK Jr., and couldn't care less about shaking the hand of a U.S. President, but it would have been a great honor just to say "hi" to you in person.

Your work served as the foundation of my own work, and many others as well. The most influential book in my life so far has been Unix Network Programming -- without it, I simply would have done what most college students do and simply go to class just to get it over with. Your work inspired me to do something outside the realm of the classroom and filled my head with ideas and dreams, and for that I can't thank you enough.

Your obituary cites you as a "noted author of computer books", but your books weren't simply "computer books" nor "programming books", nor were you simply an author. Your works stand as great works of computer science.

We will miss you, W. Richard Stevens, and we regret that you were taken from us when surely you had 20 more years of knowledge yet to bestow upon us.

Sincerely,
Mike Gleason
NcFTP Software

Re:Get a grip by drwiii · 1999-09-04 00:37 · Score: 2

Try finding ANY mention of Linux in ANY of his books.

Okay.. Inside back cover of "Unix Network Programming, Volume I":

Hosts and networks used for most examples in this text:
AIX 4.2 (w/IPv6) PowerPC
Digital Unix 4.0B (w/IPv6) Alpha
BSD/OS 3.0 (4.4BSD-Lite2) Intel x86
Linux 2.0.30 (RedHat 4.2) Intel x86
Solaris 2.5.1 (w/IPv6) Sparc
UnixWare 2.1.2 Intel x86
HP-UX 10.30 (beta) PA-RISC
SunOS 4.1.3 sparc

Michael Johnson of Red Hat Software provided the latest releases of Red Hat Linux.

He seemed pretty open-minded to me..

How I'll remember him by TreyHarris · 1999-09-04 19:47 · Score: 3

The way I remember Rich will be at conferences, standing at the front of a room where he has just presented, with a small mob of people around him, all eager to ask him some esoteric point of network programming or argue some vanishingly trivial point or just to shake his hand and tell him how much they admire him.

I learned more from Rich than from all my CS professors combined. Over lunch one day at a conference, I chatted with him about his plans for starting TCP/IP Illustrated all over again, rewriting it for IPv6. I remember being excited about these updates, and telling all my friends about them, even though they wouldn't be out for years.

It breaks my heart to think that these, and all the other good works that mind was capable of producing, will never come.

Goodbye... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-04 21:09 · Score: 2

I have 5 books by Stevens, I think I am going to go out and buy another today. I love all of his books and especially his style of writing. He can take pleasure in knowing that he helped educate thousands of people around the world.

His art more expensive now? by SEWilco · 1999-09-04 00:46 · Score: 2

Does this mean the price of TCP/IP will go up?

Kohala by Chris+Siegler · 1999-09-04 00:47 · Score: 2

His home page is here, and reading it is to find out what a truly great guy he was. My favorite is his recipe for chocolate chip cookies, which are harder to make than a bug free threaded tcp/ip stack.

His books were the best. Well written with the best exercises of any books out there. I think the reason he obviously put so much thought into the exercises at the end of chapters was because he knew that's where readers did most of their learning. Unlike other fine books like Knuth's, his books actually got used, reread, and handed around to be used again. He accomplished better than any author I can name exactly what he sought to do--teach.

I just wish I'd written and thanked him a long time ago. RIP.

Social Skills and Compassion by Seumas · 1999-09-04 22:26 · Score: 2

In the 18 months that I've read Slashdot, I have never seen such disheartening cruelty and heartlessness as displayed in the article about Richard Stevens' death. Pompous zealots lacking complete humanity oozed into every thread, including one as simple as my post suggesting that anyone who has ever read, barrowed, purchased or dog-eared any of his work donate a few bucks in his name to Habitat to Humanity.

What was the response by one such person hiding behind an AC shield? "Don't send flowers or donate to a charity in the bigot's name. If you want to help humanity -- code a GTK IRC client".

I'm astonished that the same community that so fiercely argues for freedom and fairness also witnessed a strong chorus of "But what has he done for [insert your favorite cause] lately?"

I'm as jaded, disenchanted and cynical as the next person. Probably more. But the death of a good man who is remembered fondly by his colleagues and readers is a time to keep your mouth shut about some gripe you have with his philosophy. Each of us feel pain and fear death. Underneath our beliefs, causes and actions, we all share those two primal aspects of life. If we can not sympathize and feel compassion for someone who is suffering great pain or has died, then we can never feel compassion. Compassion isn't an honorable thing. It is a basic trait of mankind that separates us from gorillas and slugs.

I'd like to think that the shallow comments made in Slashdot were by those of us who have spent our entire lives in front of our monitors and in our bedrooms or dens hidden away from society, because anyone who has a healthy composition of civility, humanity, and sociable skills could not possibly be so thoughtless. There is a time for personal opinion and debate and a time to practice the art of knowing when to shut up and be a graceful man.

Real men fight on level playing fields -- they don't kick someone while they're down.

Thankfully, the same person who tought me Perl and has his own chunk of shelf-space next to my desk also gave some depth to the man so many articles of harpooned. I encourage everyone who displayed their ignorance and carelessness to re-read Tom's post and then visit Richard's website.

Yesterday it was Postel. Today it was Stevens. Tomorrow, it could be your favorite geek.
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Re:may be a good thing, sorry to say by Clover_Kicker · 1999-09-04 00:50 · Score: 3

> No, this is not flamebait. I'm serious.

> Stevens was a noted anti-Linux, anti-Perl bigot
> who happened to be a high profile author of some
> very good Unix books. This event signifies the
> passing of the torch to the GNU generation.

I'm speachless, and that doesn't happen very often. I was going to let this slide, but I just fscking can't.

<RANT mode=REALLYFUCKINGPISSED>

It's not a fscking crime not to like Linux, or Perl. It's a matter of opinion, and the last time I checked, the GNU movement is all about giving people a little empowerment, and more choice.

The contribution of Stevens' books to the computing community has been enormous. There are so few good technical books available, and his are among the best technical books I have ever read.

How much code in the world is better because the author(s) of that code read and applied some of these books?

Now a lot of that code is in commercial software, but vast, incalculable KLOCs of Free Software/Open Source have benefitted from Stevens' insights. This man has advanced the Free Software community by leaps and bounds, without maintaining a single program (that I know of.)

One of the biggest weaknesses in the computer industry (and the Free Software movement is no exception) is the shitty documentation and books. Any author that reliably comes out with well written, concise, insightful, and experienced books deserves to be sainted IMNSHFO.

I'm a sysadmin by trade. I don't fscking care if you run GNU/Linux or *BSD or SCO or Ultrix or NT or VMS or NetWare, if you're crazy enough to maintain computers for a living, you need all the decent documentation that you can get, and TCP/IP Illustrated has helped fsckloads of people understand the subtle interactions of the various protocols that make the 'net work.

In conclusion, if I thought you were reprentative of the GNU generation, then I would probably toast my fscking Linux and FreeBSD partitions and put NT back on, you selfish, short sighted, ungrateful punk.

</RANT>

In Lieu Of Flowers . . . by Seumas · 1999-09-04 00:52 · Score: 3

As per his obituary, I think a very fitting farewell would be if everyone who read, bought, barrowed or dog-eared his books (or even if you haven't) made a small donation (a buck or five) to his requested charity.

Habitat for Humanity, 2950 E. 22nd Street, Tucson, AZ 85713

You have to love this comment, "Please wear colorful clothing to the service; Richard loved colors."
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Re:Get a grip by nosferatu-man · 1999-09-04 01:01 · Score: 2

There are /plenty/ of things to dislike about Linux and perl. Stevens' biases could well have been founded in a deeper understanding of the issues that he grappeled with than perhaps you know?

And in addition, the day that anyone in "The GNU Generation" writes a book as trenchant, concise, and informative as "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment," is the day that someone can start making noise about the torch being passed.

Regards,
JFB

--
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.

Newspaper Notice by SEWilco · 1999-09-04 01:02 · Score: 3

The web site of the Tucson Daily Star has the same info for the Stevens funeral notice. I don't know the relationship with the other obit which has the same content.

Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-04 01:33 · Score: 2

Stevens was not anti-Linux. It is well known that one of the OS he used was Red Hat Linux. But his favorite OS was the commercial offering from BSDI. Do a Deja Search. See how he was critical of the free versions of BSD and Linux because he didn't like tracking patch levels. He prefered to pay for support and leave patch level details to the pros. He wasn't "anti" anything. He just favored professional support. Nothing wrong with that. He clearly had more important things to do with his time.

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