Dennis Ritchie -- An Appreciation

[Walter Banks]

[I haven't posted here in quite some time, but I should
definitely post this here. It's also on the web athttp://www.eskimo.com/~scs/dmr.html.]

I'm a programmer, and just about always have been.
My favorite programming language is still C, and my favorite
operating system is still Unix. Dennis Ritchie was, of course,
jointly responsible for both. So I have definitely lost a
personal hero and, to the extent that I can claim I've learned
from his work, a mentor as well.

Same here. In fact, I'm quite pissed at the press in my country, who
gave a front page tribute to Steve Jobs and not even a mention about
Dennis Ritchie.

Dennis Ritchie is on a short list of individuals who had a huge impact
on computing as we know it. The press unfortunately finds it difficult
to explain how the tools we use are essential for the applications we
write.

Steve Jobs set a standard for computing from a user perspective.

w..

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

[I haven't posted here in quite some time, but I should
definitely post this here. It's also on the web athttp://www.eskimo.com/~scs/dmr.html.]

I'm a programmer, and just about always have been.
My favorite programming language is still C, and my favorite
operating system is still Unix. Dennis Ritchie was, of course,
jointly responsible for both. So I have definitely lost a
personal hero and, to the extent that I can claim I've learned
from his work, a mentor as well.

Same here. In fact, I'm quite pissed at the press in my country, who
gave a front page tribute to Steve Jobs and not even a mention about
Dennis Ritchie.

Why would they start mentioning Ritchie when he died, if they didn't mention
him while he was alive?

Steve Jobs made news while he was alive, so of course (that's why) he made news
when he died.

When an athlete makes a new world in the 100m hurdles, we do not honor
the inventor of the hurdle.

Whatever people achieve in C is /in spite/ of the language.

 

[Malcolm McLean]

Whatever people achieve in C is /in spite/ of the language.

Oh rubbish. There are many, many computer languages out there.
University computer scientists are almost obliged to release a new one
as a career development point. C was the one which stuck, and gave
birth to C++ and Java, the other two popular languages.

 

[88888 Dihedral]

I recommend Bill gates for gwbasic and Guido for python!

 

[Charles Richmond]

[I haven't posted here in quite some time, but I should
definitely post this here. It's also on the web
athttp://www.eskimo.com/~scs/dmr.html.]

I'm a programmer, and just about always have been.
My favorite programming language is still C, and my favorite
operating system is still Unix. Dennis Ritchie was, of course,
jointly responsible for both. So I have definitely lost a
personal hero and, to the extent that I can claim I've learned
from his work, a mentor as well.

Same here. In fact, I'm quite pissed at the press in my country, who
gave a front page tribute to Steve Jobs and not even a mention about
Dennis Ritchie.

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive;
but it is lightning that does the work."
-- Mark Twain

 

[Charles Richmond]

[snip...] [snip...]
[snip...]

Same here. In fact, I'm quite pissed at the press in my country, who
gave a front page tribute to Steve Jobs and not even a mention about
Dennis Ritchie.

Why would they start mentioning Ritchie when he died, if they didn't
mention
him while he was alive?

Both Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson appeared on the national news
broadcasts in the U.S., when President Clinton awarded both the National
Medal of Technology. So dmr was *not* totally ignored by the reporters.

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

Oh rubbish.

I was going to write a much longer response, but your first sentence
sums it up, really.

/Jorgen

 

[Nick Keighley]

I was going to write a much longer response, but your first sentence
sums it up, really.

quite. "Why Pascal Isn't My Favoutite Language" (or something like
that) is worth a read

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

C is close enough to the hardware to allow me to avoid writing assembly
in order to keep a program fast. Yet C is abstract enough to write
complicated ideas in a symbolic way in order to make the code easy to
maintain.

C is the mother of the modern OO languages like C++ and Java.

I would say that Pascal, Algol, BCPL and PL1 are the parents of C,
and C++ is just a dialect of C which adds Simula 67 to the parentage.

The core dictinctive C++ features are very similar to Simula, even
in the terminology. Virtual functions, access specifiers like protected,
etc.

``Simula 67 introduced objects, classes, subclasses, virtual methods,
coroutines, discrete event simulation and features garbage collection.''
[Wikipedia]

With no coroutines or garbage collection, C++ looks like a step backwards.

 

[Roberto Waltman]

I would say ... C++ is just a dialect of C which adds Simula 67 to the parentage.

What a coincidence, Bjarne Stroustrup says the same:

"C++ was designed to provide Simula’s facilities for program
organization together with C’s efficiency and flexibility for systems
programming"

 

[sadsailor]

There is some truth in that, but you have to parse out the tidbit that is
true:

C is a mutha!

 

[Malcolm McLean]

The core dictinctive C++ features are very similar to Simula, even
in the terminology. Virtual functions, access specifiers like protected,
etc.

``Simula 67 introduced objects, classes, subclasses, virtual methods,
coroutines, discrete event simulation and features garbage collection.''
[Wikipedia]

With no coroutines or garbage collection, C++ looks like a step backwards..

A language is a compromise between theoretical purity, efficiency, and
compatibility.

C++ could be learnt in a day by anyone who knew C. It only added five
of six keywords. You also very easily call routines written in C, or
fiddle about with them to turn them into C++. It had a very catchy
name. It could be implemented without too much fuss as a front end to
C, and it was about as efficient as C. Coroutines and garbage
collection were presumably rejected for this reason.

It's very easy to propose a new language, and it's moderately easy to
implement one. What's hard is to get a substantial number of users.
Dennis Ritchie and Bjarne Strousup succeeded brilliantly, but Strousup
wouldn't have succeeded without leveraging Ritchie's achievement,
arguably unfairly (if C had been a brand of soda then doubtless
Ritchie would have sued for billions, but the computer industry
doesn't work like that).

 

[Bradley K. Sherman]

...
It's very easy to propose a new language, and it's moderately easy to
implement one. What's hard is to get a substantial number of users.
Dennis Ritchie and Bjarne Strousup succeeded brilliantly, but Strousup
wouldn't have succeeded without leveraging Ritchie's achievement,
arguably unfairly (if C had been a brand of soda then doubtless
Ritchie would have sued for billions, but the computer industry
doesn't work like that).

Correction: the computer industry *didn't* work like that.

--bks

 

[Kaz Kylheku]

It's very easy to propose a new language, and it's moderately easy to
implement one. What's hard is to get a substantial number of users.

Getting users is a matter of historic accident, or of appealing to the masses
using factors which are either nontechnical, or in fact are technical
negatives.

The programming language with the most users is most probably Basic. Most
programmers can hardly name two other languages besides the one they (think
they) know; they did not make a decision that could be called informed.

MS-DOS had a substantial number of users. Q.E.D.

Eat shit; a billion flies can't be wrong?

 

[Ian Collins]

Getting users is a matter of historic accident, or of appealing to the masses
using factors which are either nontechnical, or in fact are technical
negatives.

Languages gain users either through necessity to use a platform or
technology (.NET and JavaScript[1] for example), utility (C, C++ and
popular scripting languages) and specialised niches (Lisp and friends).
The ones that live on are in the latter two categories. How many
people will still be using .NET once its owners get board and move on?

Languages that live on are those whose evolution isn't driven by one vendor.

The programming language with the most users is most probably Basic. Most
programmers can hardly name two other languages besides the one they (think
they) know; they did not make a decision that could be called informed.

MS-DOS had a substantial number of users. Q.E.D.

How many people us it now its owners are board and move on?

[1] JavaScript should probably bi in the third category.

 

[Nick Keighley]

The core dictinctive C++ features are very similar to Simula, even
in the terminology. Virtual functions, access specifiers like protected,
etc.

``Simula 67 introduced objects, classes, subclasses, virtual methods,
coroutines, discrete event simulation and features garbage collection.''
[Wikipedia]

With no coroutines or garbage collection, C++ looks like a step backwards.

A language is a compromise between theoretical purity, efficiency, and
compatibility.

C++ could be learnt in a day by anyone who knew C.

when! Stroustrup e1? I've been at it a decade or so and I don't
consider myself completly familiar with C++. Template meta-programming
anyone!

It only added five of six keywords.

a damn sight more than that!

this, public, private, protected, class, virtual, template, exception,
catch, try, operator...

You also very easily call routines written in C, or
fiddle about with them to turn them into C++. It had a very catchy
name. It could be implemented without too much fuss as a front end to
C, and it was about as efficient as C. Coroutines and garbage
collection were presumably rejected for this reason.

It's very easy to propose a new language, and it's moderately easy to
implement one. What's hard is to get a substantial number of users.
Dennis Ritchie and Bjarne Strousup succeeded brilliantly, but Strousup
wouldn't have succeeded without leveraging Ritchie's achievement,
arguably unfairly (if C had been a brand of soda then doubtless
Ritchie would have sued for billions, but the computer industry
doesn't work like that).

thank <deity>

imagine if mathematicians could sue... The Greeks would own the world.

 

[Nick Keighley]

L'ape è piccola tra gli esseri alati,
ma il suo prodotto ha il primato fra i dolci sapori.
                        Sir {11: 3}

<google translate>

"The bee is small among flying creatures,
but its product has primacy among the sweet flavors."

cute

 

[James Kuyper]

On 10/22/2011 10:57 AM, Malcolm McLean wrote:
....

C++ could be learnt in a day by anyone who knew C. ...

Perhaps it could, under the right circumstances - science fictional
concepts like machines or drugs that implant information directly in
your head come to mind. I doubt, however, that such speed learning is
the norm in the real world.

I was already very familiar with C when I first learned C++. I
immediately recognized the value of many of the new features offered by
C++. I have a long history of rapidly acquiring new computer languages,
and the amount of time it took me to learn C++ is an example of that -
but the amount of time was a lot longer than a single day. It took
longer than that for me just to finish reading a detailed description of
the new features.

... It only added five
of six keywords.

I'm curious: which of the following C++ keywords are the "five or six"
you were thinking of? When did you first learn of the keyword status of
any of the other 26 keywords in this list? I've heard that 'const',
'volatile' and 'inline' were only added to C after borrowing them from
C++, though I can't personally vouch for the truth of that assertion.
None of the other items on this list has ever been a C keyword (though
the asm keyword is marked in Annex J as a common C extension.

asm
bool
catch
class
const
const_cast
dynamic_cast
explicit
export
false
friend
inline
mutable
namespace
new
operator
private
protected
public
reinterpret_cast
static_assert
static_cast
template
this
throw
true
try
typeid
typename
using
virtual
volatile
wchar_t

 

[Frederick Williams]

The programming language with the most users is most probably Basic.

Which of its one hundred mutually incompatible varieties?

 

[Malcolm McLean]

On 10/22/2011 10:57 AM, Malcolm McLean wrote:
...


Perhaps it could, under the right circumstances.

I learnt it in a day. I bought a little book describing C++ for C
programmers, and read it on the bus. By the time the bus journey had
ended, I'd read the book and knew C++.

However that was when it was still quite new, before it had ballooned
into what it is now.