121–130 of 139 posts
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".
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/USB_icon...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I didn't read the thesis itself yet but I feel like some key point must be missing from the article. The "loop programs" described are nearly identical to the "abacus machine" presented in the textbook Computability and Logic (pp. 55-56 3rd ed.) which cites Joachim Lambek who published "How to Program an Infinite Abacus" in 1961 which seems to also be trivially close in structure (not merely equivalent). Lambek in tu…
So what would happen if we took up a collection, produced a bound copy, and sent it off to Harvard?
People, much closer to dmr, in the past have attempted it.[0] The issue it would seem is that there is no record on file at Harvard that he ever defended his thesis. ACM does however have a Doctoral Dissertation award in his name, the irony. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2626401.2626421
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...
It's high quality, but it seems satured if compared to other photos. Maybe someone with the skills can fix that?
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?
I love reading things like this. It reminds me that I'm not alone (although, yes, I realise Ritchie is dead). I find it very hard to participate in these kind of trivialities even though many other people seem to value them so much that it mean the difference between a PhD and no PhD. But I'll often kick myself later for not bothering. I wonder if Ritchie did.
So what would happen if we took up a collection, produced a bound copy, and sent it off to Harvard?
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.
If you can't, do you mind if I crosspost it there?
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.
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…
I have found that some people always view you as stupid when you’re doing certain jobs. When I was serving pints in a pub, people just assumed it was my career & that I was thick.
I’ve found it very important to not pre-judge.
