Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
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Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
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Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#2When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words.
Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#3When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words. Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.
When approaching strangers, saying something appreciative in a respectful way is neutral at absolute worst and quite amazing at best.
Case in point:
Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened.
Jane McGonigal: retweeted my question while I had 0 followers and followed about 10 people.
A semi-famous Dutch rapper: he was appreciative.
I have many examples with non-famous people too. The rule applies to both. I originally learned it as a dating concept (a decade ago) but quickly decided to compliment anyone that I genuinely wanted to give a compliment.
The reason it can still be quite amazing is simply because strangers don’t dare to compliment other people that much. I have only seen it once from another person.
You can test this theory by giving a compliment to someone you think never receives it but deserves one (my go to: cleaners, especially if it’s really clean) and to someone who does receive them more often.
My experience: both can still be quite awesome but the cleaners I complimented really went out of their way to be appreciative (not always, just sometimes). One even invited me to his home and I discovered he also was a music producer on the side. We made some music together as I am a hobbyist myself.
I never looked at cleaners the same way again.
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#4When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words. Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.
>Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.
I'm a huge gearhead. I live in the US, but a few years ago I was in Rome for work. I was out to a late lunch with my boss and was explaining that one of my favorite boutique car manufacturers, Pagani, is just south of Napoli and that I wanted to take a weekend trip to visit their facilities. No later than 10 minutes did Mr. Horacio Pagani himself walks into the restaurant and I had full on fanboy panic attack. It was just the four of us in a restaurant; my boss and I, Horacio and his friend. I froze up and couldn't finish my meal. I tried to explain to my boss, but he didn't seem to understand. As we were leaving, Horacio got up too, which made me incredibly nervous. He looked at me and in my terrible Spanish (he was raised in Argentina, which I knew because as I mentioned I was a fanboy) I muttered "mucho gusto, soy un fan de tus autos". He smiled and nodded. I've never felt like such an idiot but so happy at the same time.
Horacio Pagaini was a chief engineer at Lamborghini and basically pioneered carbon fiber manufacturing. He tried to convince Lamborghini to use carbon fiber parts, but their response was that if Ferrari wasn't using them, neither would they. Obviously that didn't last long.... He left Lamborghini and started his own company to manufacture carbon fiber parts and eventually created some of the most amazing "hypercars" that money can buy (see Pagani Huayra and Zonda).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horacio_Pagani_(auto_executive...
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#5As somebody who was in a similar situation, I paid for the printing and binding of my PhD thesis. I earned the degree. DMR didn't. It's as simple as that.
"I was there but for", "I earned it except for", "Everything but" are all excuses. I've no sympathy for him not earning his PhD if he couldn't follow through and meet the requirements.
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#6As somebody who was in a similar situation, I paid for the printing and binding of my PhD thesis. I earned the degree. DMR didn't. It's as simple as that. "I was there but for", "I earned it except for", "Everything but" are all excuses. I've no sympathy for him not earning his PhD if he couldn't follow through and meet the requirements.
Doesn't sound like he was asking for anyone's sympathy.
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#7When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words. Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.
A friend of mine once found herself seated next to Paulo Coelho (famous author of e.g. The Alchemist) on a flight. She was a huge fan, but out of respect for his privacy did not initiate any conversation.
Turns out he’s been flying to be part of a major talk show. The next night she watches the host ask the author about being famous. The author responds by saying that best part is that people approach him, and that he therefor gets to talk to so many different people, hear their stories and learn about their experiences.
So yeah. Say “thank you”.
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#8When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words. Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.
When approaching strangers, saying something appreciative in a respectful way is neutral at absolute worst and quite amazing at best. Case in point: Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened. Jane McGonigal: retweeted my question while I had 0 followers and followed about 10 people. A semi-famous Dutch rapp…
> Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened.
I'd signed up to attend his 'afscheid' lecture, thinking I might try go get my copy of 'Computer Networks' signed. Did not get around to going, probably for the better ;)
It's hard to overcome the 'say nothing' reflex. Years ago, g/f and I were visiting the Carl-Henning Pedersen museum in the town of Herning (DK), somehow we were the only visitors on that afternoon. We were blown away by the amazing wall decorations and his art. On the way out we ran into someone from the museum's staff and the Maestro himself (this was a few years before he passed away). What did we do? We just smiled and walked past them. I dunno....
And +1 the cleaners, for sure.
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#9So after reading this, is it correct to say that Ritchie basically showed in his thesis the application of the for loop for recursive prime number computation and also its application to computational complexity? AFAIK for loops where already known at the time since they first appeared in ALGOL a little earlier?
Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation
#10> My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural languages better than functional ones.
I wonder if that last bit was as unfashionable a statement when he made it as it would be now.