I eventually decided to do theoretical CS for my research, but all of these books showed me as a student what attention to detail really meant.

In fact, the typesetting of these books also made me look into groff and play around with it.

I vaguely remember that there was a phrack prophile on W. Richard Stevens just around the time he died. Such a great loss.

Thank you for your inspiring books!!

Yes indeed, the typesettings for these books are really awesome. The template is also being used by other authors notably by Jon Snader in his VPNs Illustrated book and if it's not obvious enough the name of the book is paying homage to the original TCP Illustrated series [1]. Co-incidentally Jon also wrote 44 Tips for TCP/IP network socket programming before the VPN book [2].

[1] VPNs Illustrated: Tunnels, VPNs, and IPsec: Tunnels, VPNs, and IPsec:

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/vpns-illustrated-tunnel...

[2] Effective TCP/IP Programming: 44 Tips to Improve Your Network Programs:

https://www.informit.com/store/effective-tcp-ip-programming-...

When I had to write a TCP stack in the 90s, you & Rich had a book ready for me! Thanks for that. :)

He wrote lots of the great, practical, 90s references. Shame he left us so young.

Not to cause offense, but can you indicate his cause of death? This idle question has been in my mind since 2002 or so when I used his books in graduate school. Was surprised to realize he was already dead back then.

According to Wikipedia[1], he died in 1999 at the age of 48, which is so young that I also would like to know what happened. He was apparently healthy and working and just fine a week before his death. But there's a bizarre resistance among some people regarding discussing cause of death. If a President suddenly died, we shouldn't ask about cause of death "out of respect"? I'm a big believer in privacy, but it's silly to not talk about cause of death after someone has passed away. In fact, we should know causes in order to improve all our lives (to be more cautious of heart disease, or suicide, or motorcycle accidents, etc.).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens

Sometimes though (and I'm not saying it was in this case) the cause of death is perceived as stigmatising, and so is withheld to protect the person's name, or protect the family.

This happened, for example, with Isaac Asimov who died in 1992. He contracted Aids from a blood transfusion [1]. In the 80s and 90s this was sufficiently stigmatising to warrent being kept quiet.

Today things like drug overdosing and suicide are sometimes considered shameful,and details are suppressed. Or worse; imagine having to answer that your relative was shot by police while shooting kids in an elementary school...

In truth people die of embarrassing things all the time, so in some societies it is impolite to ask.

Again, to be clear I am NOT suggesting that there was anything shameful about this death, I'm making a more general point about the nature of reporting cause of death.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

Thank you for the post, and I'd like to highlight that the only important driver here is Shame.

We all experience it (some much much much more than others), and yet we never discuss it, by its very nature. It can be debilitating and will naturally lead oneself to dark places.

Shame kills.

His TCP/IP Illustrated book was formative in my career. I wish I had've salvaged that company copy when that business shutdown - it probably just got thrown out :(