W. Richard Stevens

I was thinking about W. Richard Stevens the other day, when a colleague bought one of his books. I think the books he wrote are still unquestionably the best books on Unix programming and on TCP/IP. I first got in touch with him when I sent him a long list of errata for Advanced Unix Programming. I used to have the habit of noting down errors when I read technical books, and sending them to the authors. He was the only person who ever replied. We would up exchanging dozens of e-mail messages over the years. I was a proof reader for several of his later books, and wrote a back cover quote for TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 3. He was always very interested in his subjects and very supportive.

I only met him in person once, at the LISA convention in Boston. We spoke for about an hour. He said he thought the reason his books were so good was that he didn’t know anything about the subject when he started, but had to learn it as he want along. In retrospect I think it was really because of his ability to use diagrams effectively, and to write very clearly and concisely about technical matters. Both skills are rare in technical writers. He also did a good job of writing small example programs to show how things worked–these were the same programs he wrote to find out how things worked himself. I don’t do much really technical writing myself, but I aspire to his level.

That LISA convention was in December, 1998. He died less than a year later, at the age of 48. It was a very sad shock for me and for many other people. When we die, all that really remains are the memories that people have of us. I didn’t know Rich well, but I knew him well enough to remember him.