101–110 of 139 posts
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The jars the wizard has at hand, and the scroll (“shell script”) are familiar looking things like “null”, “tar”, “uucp”, “diff”, “awk”, “C”,... but “ oregano ”? Is that a joke or a codename or some deprecated tool?
The image also has a cat.
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I like first-class functions. I actually like currying. But I also like state, polymorphism and identity.
Are you sure you don't mean partial application?
My familiarity with FP tends to be around "Hey! I like this Swift feature! Where did it come from?"
It's the part where we clump together functions to make a single, rather powerful function that is, in essence, a rabbithole.
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Ritchie: I liked procedural languages better than functional ones. ChrisMarshallNY: I suspect that he understood functional languages quite well. He just didn't like them. Your statement doesn't follow from Ritchie's words that you quoted. Preference of A over B does not have the logical consequence that B is disliked. It doesn't even imply that A is intensely liked.
Fair point.
Personally, I prefer Haskell or some functional Python at times, since that solves certain problems well. But, we have a lot more computing resources than existed in the past. I guess it could be possible that he enjoyed the functional paradigm, but pragmatically created a procedural language, given the hardware constraints.
When 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.
He smiled awkwardly: “You’re welcome, I guess.” Textbook Larry.
Randal and I were on the same flight out of ATL and met up for a bite in an airport restaurant.
Not just for the celebrities in our profession, let the people in your everyday world know how much they mean to you, how they’ve helped you out, how they’ve made meaningful differences in your life, that you care about them, and that you love them. Life is too short not to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The jars the wizard has at hand, and the scroll (“shell script”) are familiar looking things like “null”, “tar”, “uucp”, “diff”, “awk”, “C”,... but “ oregano ”? Is that a joke or a codename or some deprecated tool?
The image also has a cat.
When 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…
Random Dennis Ritchie story: my high school principal was Dennis' brother, John, and had a "UNIX Magic" poster ( https://i.imgur.com/aqg21UI.jpg ) hanging in his office. I asked him what that was about and he dismissed it with a wave of his hand, as if annoyed: "oh, just something my brother did".
Someone posted a high res scan of this on reddit if anyone else is interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/91ntoh/comment/e3... Unfortunately no scan of the other two (feuds and views). Here someone find a more permanent place for it: https://send.firefox.com/download/c1783a94da0e8cfa/#sklTlfgc...
I am not surprised about the effort it took to find a copy of Ritchie's dissertation. Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest. But the museum used the best method in this case: talk to people close to people who had a copy at one point. In my experience when all else fails, this strategy is the primary one that ends up working. It doesn't work all the time,…
My university library has a dissertation office with a copy of every one of them back to 1931. You may not be able to find them online, but you certainly can if you go in person during business hours. Is that unusual?
When 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.
He was a wonderful speaker and just a great guy to talk to. He patiently signed copies of K&R C that folks had brought, told interesting anecdotes, and was a kind and pleasant person to everyone who spoke with him. Very approachable.
One thing I remember is him telling me that he only gets stage nerves if he knows he's being filmed. Massive crowd? No problem. Photographs? Go for it. Video cameras? If you do, you have my permission but don't tell me, and make sure I don't notice them.
After that I kept reaching out to other Big Names, and many of them said yes. I figured there was no harm in asking, all they could do is say no. And not a single person I asked said no because they didn't want to, it was always because the scheduling or travel just wouldn't line up properly.