W. Richard Stevens Passes On

Tybstar writes "Looks like W. Richard Stevens has passed on, according to this Deja article. The poster of that article is listed in the credits of UNIX Network Programming, and the book mentions his place of work. " Thanks to mpearce, we have a link to an obituary. It's weird to think that just yesterday I almost bought one of his books...

Comments

From his Preface (sort of a Eulogy)

[craw]

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)

[Rick Richardson]

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

Good bye, Rich. Good riddance, Slashdot.

[Tom Christiansen]

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

[Zico]

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

Eulogy from a humble student

[Mike Gleason]

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

How I'll remember him

[TreyHarris]

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.

Re:may be a good thing, sorry to say

[Clover_Kicker]

> 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 . . .

[Seumas]

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."
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com

Newspaper Notice

[SEWilco]

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.