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Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

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Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#151

Post by rythie »

luckydude wrote: post #90

Any chance we could get the guy who did the Steve Jobs Apple logo to take a wack at doing one for Dennis? I've never met Dennis but I've talked to him on the phone a bit, and exchanged a pile of email over the years, all about various Unix topics. Though I was nobody, he was always polite, always patient, always willing to pass on knowledge. I'm quite grateful to him for taking the time to exchange ideas and polish t…

http://blog.tagxedo.com/rip-dennis-ritchie-father-of-unix-an... is good (second post on HN right now, so you've probably seen it]

Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#152

Post by revorad »

moeffju wrote: post #149

Just looking at the stuff on my desk, the only things Dennis Ritchie has not directly or indirectly contributed to are two photos, a pair of scissors, a screwdriver and a salami. Cellphone? Check. Harddisks? Screens? USB devices? TAN generator? Wacom tablet? Applet remote? Mac mini? MacBook Pro? Camera? Check, check, check. Thanks, Dennis Ritchie, for helping to create the foundations of computing as we know it.

Those photos, scissors, screwdriver and even the salami probably involved using a computer at some stage. So he did contribute indirectly.

Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#153

Post by egor83 »

nitrogen wrote: post #103
barrkel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alnayyir, you've been hellbanned. In case you didn't know.

That must've been one seriously downvoted comment to get someone with over 2000 karma to a -2 average.

AFAIR, average is only counted on your last 50 comments.

Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#154

Post by ralfd »

bodyfour wrote: post #131
steveb wrote: post #25

There are several billion people using many billions of devices every day. From the code in your microwave to massive computing clusters, virtually all of our software can trace its ancestry back to this man's intellectual output. I'm eternally grateful for his life and contributions to humanity.

Exactly. It's hard to even really comprehend how deep his influence goes; we're so surrounded by it's hard to even see it sometimes. Consider that every single person reading these words are doing so using technology he created -- after all, even if you're not on a UNIX derivative you're probably on an OS and web browser written in C. How much code is written every day in C and its descendants? How much more in langu…

Well, I don't know… I feel that as soon as I mention Pascal or BASIC I am downvoted to oblivion.

The original Macintosh was programmed in assembler. As was MS-DOS and Windows up to version 3.1 (perhaps even in important parts in Win95?). The big boom of computing and the GUI had already happened. In the late 80s Turbo Pascal was really popular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal

For GUI programming there was (and is) the Pascal dialect Delphi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarcadero_Delphi

What would the world look like if C would have been never invented? I guess our browsers would simply be coded in Turbo Pascal dialect.

And Visual Basic is still huge (#12 on langpop.com). Also someone could reasonably argue that from the concept and ideas SmallTalk and Lisp were way more influential than C.

That said, I feel a bit dirty to make this argument. Dennis Ritchie should be praised for his accomplishments.

Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#155

Post by SoupIce »

sid0 wrote: post #143
angrycoder wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Jobs and Ritchie were important men. I don't know what you think you are going to accomplish here. Your posts are about neither of them, they are all about you.

I'm merely citing the fluff that has occupied Hacker News recently such as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3100278 . What sane, non-obsessed person gives a flying fuck what uniform someone wore and why they wore it?

I cant believe HN is filled with so many applefanboys, its quite sad sid0 gets downvoted to oblivion for reasonable comments.

Maybe they are not just apple-fanboys but ambitious corporate asslickers, probably thinking they too will one day become like Steve Jobs and others will suckup to them due to their well-developed fashion sense mixed with "business" skills.

While real genius men such as dmr is just another hacker.

Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#156

Post by [deleted] »

keidian wrote: post #62
xxpor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including all of the tech that Steve Jobs had a significant impact on.

Exactly. When I first found out about dmr, I really really hoped the stories will flood in here after the massive Steve Jobs amount. Not to take anything away from Steve, but dmr is far more important in my opinion, and I'm sure many other geeks would agree. I'm glad he isn't just quietly being forgotten like I feared he would.

[deleted]

Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#157

Post by simplekoala »

steveb wrote: post #25

There are several billion people using many billions of devices every day. From the code in your microwave to massive computing clusters, virtually all of our software can trace its ancestry back to this man's intellectual output. I'm eternally grateful for his life and contributions to humanity.

Sums up my feelings too. dmr is a legendary computer scientist who in all fairness had more impact on the field of computer science, and programming than any one of us can even begin to fathom. True legend.

Re: Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died

#159

Post by rimantas »

sid0 wrote: post #100
chugger wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMR created. SJ inspired. let's not compare both.

let's not compare both. Ah yes, the cognitive dissonance of an Apple fanboy developer who knows that C is far more important than anything SJ ever did yet can't reconcile that with their belief that SJ was god. Shame on Hacker News's audience that the front page isn't filled up with Dennis stories right now.

You know, something what Apple did was actually important and inspiring to some. Let me present a little of Pascal code: http://www.computerhistory.org/highlights/macpaint/
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