[HN Gopher] Dennis Ritchie Home Page (2006)
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Dennis Ritchie Home Page (2006)
Author : mehdix
Score : 207 points
Date : 2022-01-29 07:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bell-labs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bell-labs.com)
| cookingoils wrote:
| Lots of HTML Energy here!
| mikemaney wrote:
| Somewhere on the Internet exists a Plan 9 press release with my
| name on it. When I had a chance to corner a few of Dennis's
| colleagues at Mobile World Congress (they were, at that time,
| part of Alcatel-Lucent), I asked them for their memories of
| working alongside him.
|
| Please excuse the audio, I was working with a FlipCam and just
| focused on capturing what I could for the history books.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE4ZRPwbNhA&t=141s
| raister wrote:
| From Wikipedia: "News of Ritchie's death was largely overshadowed
| by the media coverage of the death of Apple co-founder Steve
| Jobs, which occurred the week before."
|
| NOW I'm sad.
|
| RIP Richie, your place in computing heaven is secured.
| vram22 wrote:
| hulitu wrote:
| HN has a weak spot for Marketroids like Jobs or Musk. It it sad
| that the people being praised are not the ones doing the work,
| just the ones presenting it. For me, Dennis Ritchie, Ken
| Thompson, Brian Kernighan, Alfred Aho are real people who built
| something. The others (Musk, Jobs) are only opportunists with a
| big mouth.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Yeah, it really frustrates me that this site's startup
| culture worships people who are veritably garbage individuals
| as opposed to recognizing the people who, you know, actually
| built the stuff in the first place. I struggle imagining a
| world where so-called hackers respect Jobs more than Wozniak
| or Dennis Ritchie, but here we are...
| penlightment wrote:
| R.I.P Legend
| Angle_Devoid wrote:
| Their works still live among us, if anyone tried to look close
| enough, they would still see their names all over it
| elnatro wrote:
| A titan among humans, co-creator of C and UNIX, a statue should
| be erected to this man.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| It's a shame that the Americans don't have a culture of putting
| luminaries (other than presidents obviously) on their bank
| notes; it's a wonderful and far-reaching way of celebrating a
| person's contribution to the culture. Even so, Ritchie might be
| considered a little niche for such an accolade, but it's a nice
| thought experiment nevertheless.
| user3939382 wrote:
| His recognition level is niche but his contributions aren't.
| His language (C) and OS both literally (UNIX->BSD->macOS/iOS)
| and in design (Linux/Android) is powering a huge part of
| civilization.
| redsummer wrote:
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Theoretically, how would one build a statue of Dennis?
|
| Yes, I'm serious. If it costs less than $10k, I'd love to make
| a statue of Dennis and put it somewhere in my house. Partly to
| show off my excellent sensibilities in artistic taste on my
| otherwise barren walls.
|
| But mostly I just realized I have no idea how statues are made
| circa 2022, and it sounds fun{,ny}.
| elnatro wrote:
| I mean a statue-homage in his city or town, I'm not even
| American but would donate to this cause.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Certainly. I would too. But wouldn't it be cool to go down
| to your laundry room or wherever and see a bigass Dennis
| Ritchie statue?
|
| I suppose I could put it in the yard, facing a neighbor's
| window. Then we'd be able to dress Dennis for Halloween and
| Christmas too.
|
| But for real, is it completely impractical to want your own
| statue of someone? Rich people do it, and it's been a few
| centuries, so I bet technology has worked its usual magic
| on the price...
|
| EDIT: in Germany you can get a 3D printed 10 inch figurine
| for $400: https://doob3d.com/ so this is possible in
| principle.
|
| Other refs: https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-
| make-a-life-s...
| rectang wrote:
| Requiring something weatherproof which can be displayed
| outside and not degrade quickly when exposed to the
| elements will dramatically increase the cost. Can you
| make your artistic point with something which can only be
| displayed inside?
| TheMonarchist wrote:
| How about designing a DR balloon instead? Costs would be
| divided by mass production.
| chickenWing wrote:
| The art of marble or bronze sculpting is still around,
| although much rarer than it used to be. It's a trade like any
| other, requiring years of study to achieve a high level of
| competence (notwithstanding the trend of throwing a bunch of
| random metal pieces together and calling it art - true art
| requires creativity _and_ skill; one or the other does not
| suffice).
|
| Many university art programs have a sculpture department.
| Student and faculty artists will make works on commission,
| although it's hard to find good figurative art among the sea
| of abstract political B.S. If you're really serious, Italy is
| the place for the best artisans, as it has been since the
| Renaissance[1].
|
| There are still some old-school sculptors around [2] in
| America who take the craft seriously.
|
| [1] http://www.spartacopalla-scultore.it/english.html [2]
| https://corneliussullivan.com/
| rectang wrote:
| Find a local sculptor you like and commission a work! Your
| budget won't get you somebody famous, but it's enough.
|
| Maybe consider a bust rather than a life size full body
| sculpture. I think that a bust of Dennis Ritchie would be a
| pretty awesome quirk in somebody's house. Engineering heroes
| aren't normally celebrated like that.
| samanator wrote:
| Check out Veijo Ronkkonen. A modern sculptor.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/veijo-roenkkoenen-
| sculpt...
| rectang wrote:
| This artist died in 2010, so won't available for
| commissions XD. However, it's a cool aesthetic and it's
| worth checking out the article just to see it.
|
| Practically speaking, if you actually want to find a
| sculptor to commission a work, search for a local
| sculptor's guild and check out local galleries or
| exhibitions. Many works at exhibitions will be available
| for sale and will have prices listed, which will give you
| some idea about cost.
|
| Plus, visiting local galleries if you haven't done it
| before is a fun adventure!
| klelatti wrote:
| I think the best monument to DR is the software billions of us
| use every day. Best thing we can do is make more people aware
| of his work.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Dennis was 30 when he published the first Unix software manual,
| according to his homepage: https://www.bell-
| labs.com/usr/dmr/www/1stEdman.html
|
| It's interesting to wonder which 30yo's project today might have
| as much impact.
|
| You may think it's impossible, but 40 years is a long time.
| People always underestimate the impact of decades, and
| overestimate the impact of years.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _People always underestimate the impact of decades, and
| overestimate the impact of years._
|
| Sometimes cited as Gates' Law, and also attributed to Arthur C.
| Clarke, Tony Robbins, or Peter Drucker. But they may have all
| gotten the idea from Roy Amara.
|
| https://fs.blog/gates-law/
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Thank you! I'd always wondered if it was a Gates original,
| and what the history was.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| It reminds me of the famous Steve Jobs quote, "Good artists
| borrow, great artists steal."
|
| Apparently Steve stole that quote from Pablo Picasso, who
| borrowed it from Igor Stravinsky, who lifted it from T.S.
| Eliot.
|
| https://www.uvu.edu/arts/applause/posts/stealing.html
| vucetica wrote:
| I was in 6th grade when I found "The C Programming Language" on
| the floor in my friend's house. I picked it up, took it home, and
| read it cover to cover. I didn't have a computer then, but I was
| absolutely sure about what I wanted to do in my life.
|
| Thank you, Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Kernighan for opening the world of
| computer science for me.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| surprising -- I picked up the same, also read it cover to
| cover, and wondered over and over what kind of thinking leads
| to the small assembly'ish idioms and quirky character IO
| definitions. "Structured Programming" was obvious to me, and
| using that design to build non-trivial programs was very
| compelling, but the constant emphasis on small, tricky ways to
| move around a character seemed driven by some intense factory
| of machine parts thinking, not clean abstractions or consistant
| naming or human-readable coding. I immediately wanted to try
| this "big phone network" core OS language on my portable home
| computer with apparently one-one hundred thousandth of the
| capacity. Other home computer companies were publishing C
| compilers rapidly with lots of feature tradeoffs, so there was
| no question that C was the thing to use for me. Not good design
| at all though -- machine requirement driven totally.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I recently worked to update a Linux-based system that was
| originally built by a team that had previously implemented
| the same product on a microcontroller-based system. The Linux
| drivers are obviously direct ports of the old subsystems,
| without any apparent effort to understand or leverage
| existing kernel drivers or subsystems that could have
| simplified (or outright replaced) their custom functionality.
| It is unholy.
|
| Now, this might sound absurd by the standards of today
| (because it is), but this was the transition that every
| programmer had to make back when high level languages were
| introduced. It takes time to adapt to a paradigm shift, so it
| hardly seems surprising when vestiges of the "old ways" can
| be seen peeking through the curtains of the new abstraction.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I ordered it by inter-library loan in 1991 to rural Oregon. I
| had recently learned 6502 assembly language, so pointers seemed
| "obvious". A few years later in CS101 I had such instinctive
| feel for them I could hardly explain them to my fellow
| students.
|
| Thank you K&R.
| bear8642 wrote:
| > so pointers seemed "obvious"
|
| Indeed - having come from low level route, never really
| understood why people get so confused with them
| dhosek wrote:
| I can remember writing a large Pascal program in the 80s
| and really wishing I had function pointers available so I
| could pass in a reference to a function. I look back on
| that as an autodidact programmer and realize that I had
| some vague instinctual notion of stuff that would become
| commonplace as OO and functional paradigms took over.
| dhosek wrote:
| I was lent a copy of K&R by an English teacher1 in my high
| school (this was 1984ish). I still remember the smell of coffee
| and nicotine that was imbued in its pages and any time I deal
| with C code, the sense memory comes back to me.
|
| For a while, under the influence of K&R and _The TeXbook_ , I
| contemplated going to Stanford to study computer science and
| then working at Bell Labs. I did neither.
|
| [?][?][?]
|
| 1. About ten years ago, I decided to try to reach out to him
| and thank him and comment about how out paths kind of were the
| inverse of each other--he had a degree in computer science but
| ended up teaching high school English, I had a degree in
| English and ended up programming computers--and I discovered
| that he had died a few months previous. Whenever possible, get
| in touch with those who influenced you earlier if just to say
| hi and thanks.
| ascari wrote:
| When I was 14, I emailed him to thank for his work. Years later
| he humbly responded and said he is surpised that C is still
| around.
| codegeek wrote:
| He replied to an email years later or were these 2 separate
| threads ?
| ascari wrote:
| He replied to that original email years later
| p0d wrote:
| I sometimes think modern culture has lost a grip on the past.
| Much has gone before us and much will go after us.
|
| I find reading the Unix Manual comforting as it reminds me where
| we have come from. It was written a handful of weeks after I was
| born and I am still using it's commands fifty years later.
| googamooga wrote:
| I've been working for Lucent Technologies in Moscow, Russia from
| 2000 to 2004. I remember my feelings when I looked up Dennis
| Ritchie in PeopleSoft, corporate directory - hey, I work in the
| same company with a man who invented Unix and C! Lucent was a
| great place to work, even in Russia. :)
| xwowsersx wrote:
| The ease with which I was able to read this page has me wondering
| how much of the challenges I sometimes have with focus and
| attention have to do with modern web design where pages are
| littered with elements unrelated to the text (not to mention
| ads). It's hard to beat the readability of black text on a white
| background with a few <p>'s
| knolan wrote:
| I worked in Bell Labs from 2012 to 2018, unfortunately then it
| was a shadow of its former self. The MBAs had taken over.
|
| While there Weldon tried to pivot the place from being 'like
| twitter' to an incubator to a like a startup. He got an Apple
| Watch so we were going to be a wearables lab. He threw together a
| book on the supposed future of networks and conspired to get it
| to the NYT #1 by forcing us all to buy it.
|
| There were endless reorganisations. Disastrous leads parachuted
| in to wreck groups. Weldon played favourite to an alarming degree
| only to turn on them when they didn't deliver on the
| aforementioned vapid promises.
|
| We had endless managers holding endless meetings telling the
| smart people what they should be doing and not listening to what
| the smart people wanted to or could do. All hands meetings
| telling us how great everything was while they were letting a
| third of us go.
|
| They engaged in vanity projects like putting a 4G network on the
| moon and getting us to build endless fake demos for technologies
| that didn't exist and then acting surprised when told said
| technology didn't exist.
|
| The funny thing was that the old timers over in Murray Hill just
| ignored all of this and continued to work away on their research
| untouchable like some prize zoo exhibit.
|
| It was a place full of the most wonderfully intelligent people
| managed by fools who wasted fortunes on flashy demos rather that
| let the smart people take the time to build something.
| krylon wrote:
| This sounds disturbingly similar to my time at T-Systems as a
| trainee.
|
| _Brilliant_ tech people getting managed to death by clueless
| MBAs. It was a great place to learn, though.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > conspired to get it to the NYT #1 by forcing us all to buy
| [his book]
|
| How many people worked at Bell Labs at the time? It looks to be
| a little over 600 now, which in relation to NYT #1 (best
| selling list?) having less-than-1000 employees all buy a copy
| seems to be a relatively ineffective strategy.
| rjsw wrote:
| If it was a hardback then that could make a big difference to
| sales.
| knolan wrote:
| There were considerably more when you look at the various
| European sites and other staff.
| amelius wrote:
| > and getting us to build endless fake demos for technologies
| that didn't exist
|
| But of course researchers are to blame too, if they lend
| themselves to doing stuff like this.
| knolan wrote:
| True, it was all some people did... and some continue to do
| after our site was shut down. They know nothing else.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| Bell labs was the original mafia though. Rob pike, Dennis
| Ritchie, Ken Thompson...
| Angle_Devoid wrote:
| I'm assuming bells labs no longer has the financial backing of
| a monopoly like AT&T that they had 40 years ago?
| gompertz wrote:
| They are now owned by Nokia.
| Zeromika wrote:
| I suppose even if they had the funding the company itself is
| at it's value extraction phase.
| knolan wrote:
| It was cleaved off AT&T as part of Lucent and then merged
| with Alcatel. Part of the problem there was that it was never
| clear if Lucent merged with Alcatel or if Alcatel acquired
| Lucent. The whole company was pretty dysfunctional but
| nothing too unusual there.
|
| Nokia came along flush with MS money from the sale of their
| handset business to buy Alcatel Lucent and got Bell Labs for
| free. Neither company was doing particularly well flogging
| network gear and together they didn't do much better.
| christophilus wrote:
| Makes me think of Buffett's saying that goes something like: "I
| invest in companies that could be successfully run by monkeys
| because eventually they will be."
|
| I don't know how an organization avoids this fate, but it does
| seem to eventually come for all enterprises.
|
| IBM, Bell Labs, GE; who else should be on that list?
| davidb_ wrote:
| > IBM, Bell Labs, GE; who else should be on that list?
|
| Intel felt quite a bit like IBM during my time there circa
| 2010.
|
| I wasn't familiar with this quote, but wow was that my
| experience at large tech orgs. I wish I would have known this
| about 15 years ago, as perhaps I would have done a better job
| picking orgs to work at early in my career instead of being
| so frustrated.
| amelius wrote:
| The Peter principle.
| bjarneh wrote:
| Boeing
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Kodak - can you believe they used to be a defense contractor
| (cameras or lens for spy satellites, among other things)
| rossmohax wrote:
| AFAIK Kodak strength was film, not cameras or lenses.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| please define "strength" (?)
| amelius wrote:
| expertise
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| They also made cameras. Ever hear of the wildly popular
| Brownie? Anyway their film expertise does not take away
| their involvement in cameras for spy satellites in the
| 1960s.
| kibwen wrote:
| Google has been on this list for the past decade, as
| demonstrated by the Google+ fiasco of 2011. Same for
| Microsoft in the post-Gates era and Apple in the post-Jobs
| era. As for Facebook, the vapid metaverse hype shows that it
| has well and truly jumped the shark.
| josefrichter wrote:
| I would argue that Apple is doing fairly well in post-Jobs
| era, probably much better than anyone expected. Microsoft
| seems to be making some steps forward here and there,
| improving its reputation among developers and end users
| (although they still do their fair share of missteps).
| TedShiller wrote:
| Microsoft will always be a pathetic company
| porknubbins wrote:
| Apple has done some pretty ugly stuff related to the App
| store monopoly and fighting the right to repair but having
| monopolistic tendencies has always been baked in to a
| company that wants you to run both its hardware and
| software, and that is not the same thing as being MBAized
| (ie greed/evil and technical prowess can be orthagonal).
| Their recent processor success proves they are not another
| IBM.
| dopylitty wrote:
| From its history since the MD merger you could argue Boeing
| should be on this list.
|
| It's the inevitable result of prioritizing profit rather than
| prioritizing the creation of quality products that the people
| working at a company can be proud of.
|
| That's why you see companies fall apart when the founders
| leave. They're replaced by people who prioritize profit for
| the company and wealth for themselves rather than product
| quality so the company ends up rudderless.
| Aloha wrote:
| Unless the founder of the company builds a culture that is
| designed to survive without them at the center, the company
| will eventually fail without them there.
|
| One of my former employers was like this - the founder was
| a brilliant engineer, who installed good financial
| controls, and was himself decent at the business end.
|
| But, he was a micromanger, and he never sought to create
| replacements for himself inside the company, he tended to
| penalize people who stepped out of line too. So once he was
| out of the picture (he sold out), we didnt really have the
| right person to run the company, or the right culture to
| just install a generic manager with industry expertise, it
| instead was a company that had been formed for the founders
| personal needs.
|
| That company was purchased by a multinational, and is now
| being systemically dismantled.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _That 's why you see companies fall apart when the
| founders leave. They're replaced by people who prioritize
| profit for the company and wealth for themselves rather
| than product quality so the company ends up rudderless._
|
| Which ironically fucks over profit anyways, just about
| every time. I think it's more of a personal greed thing
| combined with incompetence, on top of perverse incentives
| that come with being a publicly traded company.
|
| The quarterly profit model all but ensures a societal-scale
| myopia in the end.
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| What's not to love?! Loads fast. No pop-ups and scripts to get in
| the way. No Reader mode needed.
| srvmshr wrote:
| I was working on an annotated (unofficial) edition of K&R updated
| to the latest C standards, with commentary like the Lion's book
| on UNIX, completely typeset in LaTeX. Sadly, I don't think it
| will ever see the light of the day due to copyright.
|
| I had some correspondence with DMR in my early college days. It
| would have been an ideal tribute.
| throwawayt215 wrote:
| Maybe reach out to Kernighan?
| srvmshr wrote:
| Our initial request was forwarded to Pearson and their lawyer
| responded with a heavy-handed threat.
| user3939382 wrote:
| If you're interested, I'd try to get ahold of an executive
| at Pearson. Some big corp lawyer has 0 concept of the
| significance of your work and doesn't have the authority to
| green light anything anyway.
| [deleted]
| dopeboy wrote:
| The first book I bought for programming was C Programming
| Language. Freshman year, 2004, for EECS 10 at UCI. To my delight,
| it remains part of the curriculum of the course, 17 years later
| with the same instructor too:
|
| https://newport.eecs.uci.edu/~doemer/f19_eecs10/syllabus.htm...
| ztetranz wrote:
| TIL, he never received his PhD because he didn't provide a bound
| copy of his thesis to the Harvard library.
| https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies...
| polar wrote:
| There are many Bell Labs these days: https://www.bell-
| labs.com/about/locations/
| jbirer wrote:
| Even though I never met or knew Ritchie I still feel bad when I
| read about his death, when I was a teen I would go in rabbit
| holes reading about C and Unix, and would read about all the
| design decisions he made and the rationales for it, a true loss
| for the programming world.
|
| The concepts of minimalism and modularism are being thrown away
| and it shows in the performance and stability of new software.
| It's a shame we have to learn the same lessons over and over.
| shorts_theory wrote:
| That sounds interesting. Could you link some sources where I
| can read more about Ritchie's design decision for C and Unix?
| bitexploder wrote:
| On the other hand, hardware has continued to expand to support
| the bloat in software. I do agree computer software design
| could be better, thanks Electron. My most used piece of
| software is written in Java. I also spend a lot of time in
| Electron. My terminal is written in D (Tilix). I guess my point
| is, it could be better, but there is no incentive to make it
| leaner so no one will try. Nothing is really stopping anyone
| from running old school Linux software though. I know guys who
| run FVWM and really minimalist configurations of their Linux
| systems.
| Angle_Devoid wrote:
| >Even though I never met or knew Ritchie I still feel bad when
| I read about his death, when I was a teen I would go in rabbit
| holes reading about C and Unix, and would read about all the
| design decisions he made and the rationales for it, a true loss
| for the programming world.
|
| sounds a lot like me, even I still read docs related to old
| school UNIX and C to this day
|
| >The concepts of minimalism and modularism are being thrown
| away and it shows in the performance and stability of new
| software. It's a shame we have to learn the same lessons over
| and over.
|
| why though? is coding huge monolithic software easier to do
| rather than creating a set of modular and simple tools?
| voakbasda wrote:
| Yes, creating a monolith is usually easier and faster. It is
| also the wrong thing to do, more often than not. As they grow
| and mature, properly designed modular systems can be easier
| to debug, maintain, test, deploy, and document.
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