As I said on the condolences page, John Tiller had a profound impact on my life. As a high school student I participated in a summer study program at a local college where John was an instructor. He provided a whirlwind review of programming languages and gave us assignments in each. I can only say that the lightbulb came on - the notion that there could be so many languages, with so many different affordances,so many ways of expressing problems, fascinated me then and continues to this day. I spent years afterwards trying to track down John until a chance posting on HN led me to John Tiller Software, and an opportunity to thank him. My wife asked me this morning how was it that he had such an impact in so short a time, and I can only say that he taught me what It was that I wanted to learn and set me on a path of discovery.

Thank you for your comment. I unfortunately didn't know of John Tiller before seeing this post, but I feel it's anecdotes like yours that do disproportionately more to help put color on someone than what you can otherwise just read about them on "static" sources. It brings to mind the quote from Maya Angelou, how people remember how you made them feel.

His war games are niche, but man so good if you are into such games.

I usually will read a general book about the period and the war, and then more focused from memoirs of people that were in conflict to analyses of battles.

I never knew how much logistic actually shapes conflicts until I started playing games like this.

Logistics is so often ignored or abstracted away to an after thought.

I'm enjoying Shadow Empire right now and logistics is so critical. It'd be an amazing game if the UI was improved, it's pretty terrible.

Amateurs study tactics, armchair generals study strategy, but professionals study logistics.

How you feed an army matters more than how you lead an army.

I had a lot of fun playing John Tiller's Campaign Series by myself and with my buddies. We'd play the turn based, company/battalion level tactical game on a single computer using its unique single-machine play feature. I can still remember the hex tiles, and the catchy background music.

Thanks for all the memories. RIP John.

Wow, I just found his war games a few days after getting interested in the board game side of the genre. They're interesting int hat respect in that they seem to remain very similar to the board game style war games, except with some ai and even multi-player features. Rest in peace.

Brain cancer is a very tough way to go. My heart is out for him and those close to him.