[HN Gopher] In Memory of Stiver
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       In Memory of Stiver
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 207 points
       Date   : 2024-11-04 06:56 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.jetbrains.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.jetbrains.com)
        
       | oytis wrote:
       | Didn't know about that side of his talent. Among broader Russian
       | audience Stiver was known as a maintainer of the largest pirate
       | library in Russian (see
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41634780).
        
         | ptero wrote:
         | It is also broader than just Russian and bigger than just
         | pirate. Flibusta has been my go-to source for books for many
         | years.
        
       | jrpelkonen wrote:
       | Back in the day, I had to deal with some poorly documented closed
       | source Java applications (e.g. IBM WebSphere). Tools like
       | Fernflower and its precursors were invaluable to fill the gaps.
       | 
       | Thank you, Stiver, and R.I.P.
        
         | patwolf wrote:
         | I worked on WebSphere back in the day. There were a lot of pre-
         | compiled libraries provided by other IBM teams. I too made good
         | use of decompilers (probably jad at the time) as it was often
         | easier than trying to track down the source.
        
           | AstroJetson wrote:
           | I also had a huge library of decompiled Websphere libraries.
           | IBM was always sending patches and we would go "ok, what does
           | this do?" "Fixes your problem?""How""Really well." So it got
           | decompiled to see what it did.
           | 
           | There were lots of "We think your patch is doing XYZZY, we
           | see where our code should be doing that. We've updated our
           | code and the problem went away."
           | 
           | Fernflower was awesome. RIP Stiver, glioblastoma can be an
           | ugly way to die.
        
             | mananaysiempre wrote:
             | > glioblastoma can be an ugly way to die.
             | 
             | He opted for an assisted suicide:
             | https://flibusta.is/node/684900.
        
       | petesergeant wrote:
       | > a German programmer of Russian origin
       | 
       | I wonder how much of a boom Russia will see from emigres
       | returning home if the political environment lets up a little
        
         | trhway wrote:
         | Not much. Russia is a country of just 140M people. With wider
         | availability of education/etc. size of population matters more
         | and more.
        
           | cgh wrote:
           | And Russia's demographic crisis is going to get a lot worse,
           | cementing its irrelevency as a world power:
           | https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/03/04/russias-
           | populati...
        
         | protomolecule wrote:
         | Most likely Stiver emigrated in the 90s for economic reasons --
         | Russia was in shambles. There are about 11 millions of
         | emigrants of Russian origin [0], but I highly doubt that many
         | will come back even if tomorrow we get a new liberal president.
         | 
         | [0] https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/WMR-2022.pdf
        
         | pk-protect-ai wrote:
         | How do you change the political environment in a dictatorship
         | where ruling class has all the power and majority of the money
         | and controls what you should read, watch or talk about?
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-08 23:00 UTC)