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Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

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Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#111

Post by kps »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #100
bch wrote: post #95

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 Wizard's hat is labeled "su" and the huge shell that everything is mixing in is brilliant. Also note the pipes on the ceiling. This is amazing. Oregano is still around! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregano_%28software%29

That ‘Oregano’ probably belongs to the wrong decade, if not the wrong century. A thread on comp.unix.wizards suggests that it is a reference to a Berkeley developer caught crossing the US–Canada border with a bag of oregano — that was actually oregano.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#112

Post by BerSerKer »

sritchie wrote: post #108
faizshah wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have a copy of Views! Away from home for a few days but I can post pics of the three posters when I make it home.

Hey, I would appreciate that. Thanks.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#113

Post by abhgh »

bch wrote: post #95
prdonahue wrote: post #71

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".

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?

Electrical circuit simulation [1] ... didn't know about this myself either, but noticed its still available in the Ubuntu repo and installed it.

EDIT: just noticed the comment by user kps in the sibling tree - might not be the software since it is too recent to be on the poster.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregano_(software)

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#114

Post by atrettel »

closeparen wrote: post #109
atrettel wrote: post #52

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,…

>Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest 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?

No, that is fairy common, as far as I know. The only issue with that is that some universities will not lend out dissertations via interlibrary loan. In those cases, the only way to read a dissertation is to visit the university. This is a big problem for foreign dissertations, since it makes it extremely difficult to access the research.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#115

Post by acidburnNSA »

kps wrote: post #111
acidburnNSA wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wizard's hat is labeled "su" and the huge shell that everything is mixing in is brilliant. Also note the pipes on the ceiling. This is amazing. Oregano is still around! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregano_%28software%29

That ‘Oregano’ probably belongs to the wrong decade, if not the wrong century. A thread on comp.unix.wizards suggests that it is a reference to a Berkeley developer caught crossing the US–Canada border with a bag of oregano — that was actually oregano.

Oops. Yeah you're right. Wrong century millennium, no less!

They do mention the circuit simulator, SPICE in that same thread. But still, not this oregano for sure.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.unix.wizards/kFdPoJBpcS...

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#116

Post by inopinatus »

u801e wrote: post #66
dzdt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is at its core a declarative programming language. Entering formulas in cells that reference other cells declares the relationship of the calculated cells to its referents. It is not an imperative language: the user does not tell the computer which order in which to carry out computations. It is not procedural: there is no notion writing of procedures within its cells. It is not functional: while there are buil…

> while there are built-in functions users cannot write their own in the same way. It's been a while since I've used Excel, but I thought you could write custom methods using VBA that could be called in a given cell.

Being able to write functions doesn’t make a language functional. The hallmark of functional programming is closures as first-class objects, passed as arguments or returned from other functions.

The nearest Excel equivalent would be constructing a formula string for later evaluation, which is far from the same thing. If you wanted to perform lambda calculus in Excel you’d end up implementing your own functional programming language in VBA. Have fun with that :-)

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#117

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

IncRnd wrote: post #104
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point.

I've been researching your point since I read your comment, but I haven't been able to learn if he actually disliked functional languages. 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 procedu…

I thought he was talking about Mathematics.

It's a functional language.

Always has been.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#118

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

oh_sigh wrote: post #55
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I liked procedural languages better than functional ones. (Emphasis, mine). I suspect that he understood functional languages quite well. He just didn't like them. I like some aspects of FP, but there are other aspects that I don't like. My own development style is a ghastly chimera of techniques, technologies and jargon that coagulate into a disgusting bouillabaisse that makes everyone go "tsk, tsk," but that alwa…

The link on your about page to your LinkedIn profile is broken

Thanks so much for that! It's been fixed.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#119

Post by beepy »

prdonahue wrote: post #71

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".

John Ritchie was my high school English teacher! After I chose something about computers as a topic for some essay, he asked me if I knew what Unix was. I did not.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#120

Post by macintux »

notkaiho wrote: post #13
elygre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

But, as your friend thought, being respectful is also important. By all means say thank you, but don't expect much response beyond an acknowledgement. Famous people get TIRED of strangers talking to them, as much as they like the random encounters.

I suspect that varies. Actors, e.g., are far more likely to be recognized. I think the only author I’m a fan of who I’d recognize is Asimov, and obviously I’m unlikely to meet him on the street.
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