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Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

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Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#31

Post by emkemp »

emkemp wrote: post #28
pfdietz wrote: post #18

I see no mention of family beyond siblings. Was he not married/in a relationship? I realize some people don't want that, but it's always made me sad even so.

He reportedly was never in a relationship. This comes from unidentified members of the Ritchie family who set up a web site focussed mostly on his unpublished PhD thesis. The site includes some personal information on his life. From https://dmrthesis.net/story-and-question/ (near the bottom) "In his adult years Dennis had a reputation for being famously private.... There were topics that were completely off limits wi…

I should add, on the same page, there is an excerpt of an interview with his sister Lynn who set Dennis up with a friend for her junior prom. So he at least dated.

More broadly:

"As a youth Dennis was social and outgoing, then in young adulthood he transformed quite rapidly to become more private and anti-social. Hard to pin down exactly when this would have been happening… except that clues from John and Lynn’s interviews suggest perhaps sometime around February 1968 might be central."

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#32

Post by shrimp_emoji »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #24
boringuser2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's a feature, not a bug.

The apotheosis of Design is using a SPA that breaks your browser's functionality (tabs, back button, all that shit) while on the GNOME desktop. I.e., being in paradise.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#33

Post by ed25519FUUU »

emkemp wrote: post #28
pfdietz wrote: post #18

I see no mention of family beyond siblings. Was he not married/in a relationship? I realize some people don't want that, but it's always made me sad even so.

He reportedly was never in a relationship. This comes from unidentified members of the Ritchie family who set up a web site focussed mostly on his unpublished PhD thesis. The site includes some personal information on his life. From https://dmrthesis.net/story-and-question/ (near the bottom) "In his adult years Dennis had a reputation for being famously private.... There were topics that were completely off limits wi…

Sounds lonely.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#34

Post by [deleted] »

emkemp wrote: post #28
pfdietz wrote: post #18

I see no mention of family beyond siblings. Was he not married/in a relationship? I realize some people don't want that, but it's always made me sad even so.

He reportedly was never in a relationship. This comes from unidentified members of the Ritchie family who set up a web site focussed mostly on his unpublished PhD thesis. The site includes some personal information on his life. From https://dmrthesis.net/story-and-question/ (near the bottom) "In his adult years Dennis had a reputation for being famously private.... There were topics that were completely off limits wi…

[deleted]

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#35

Post by shrimp_emoji »

emkemp wrote: post #28
pfdietz wrote: post #18

I see no mention of family beyond siblings. Was he not married/in a relationship? I realize some people don't want that, but it's always made me sad even so.

He reportedly was never in a relationship. This comes from unidentified members of the Ritchie family who set up a web site focussed mostly on his unpublished PhD thesis. The site includes some personal information on his life. From https://dmrthesis.net/story-and-question/ (near the bottom) "In his adult years Dennis had a reputation for being famously private.... There were topics that were completely off limits wi…

Sounds based.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#36

Post by karlzt »

emkemp wrote: post #31
emkemp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He reportedly was never in a relationship. This comes from unidentified members of the Ritchie family who set up a web site focussed mostly on his unpublished PhD thesis. The site includes some personal information on his life. From https://dmrthesis.net/story-and-question/ (near the bottom) "In his adult years Dennis had a reputation for being famously private.... There were topics that were completely off limits wi…

I should add, on the same page, there is an excerpt of an interview with his sister Lynn who set Dennis up with a friend for her junior prom. So he at least dated. More broadly: "As a youth Dennis was social and outgoing, then in young adulthood he transformed quite rapidly to become more private and anti-social. Hard to pin down exactly when this would have been happening… except that clues from John and Lynn’s inte…

>> become more private and anti-social.

It's a common mistake to say 'anti-social' instead of 'asocial'.

https://labs.kagi.com/fastgpt?query=what%27s+the+difference+...

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#37

Post by SoftTalker »

drdec wrote: post #27
SoftTalker wrote: post #15

A number of academics seem to have very simple HTML pages like this one. See Knuth's page for example. Most of the Comp Sci professors at my school had pages like this also. Only thing I don't like about reading them on a modern wide monitor is that the lines get too long. A bit of CSS to set a max width and a margin and they'd be near-perfect. Fortunately there's reader mode.

Did you try resizing your window?

Sure, but I use a tiled window manager and normally have my browser on its own screen so it takes up the whole screen. Even with a narrower window, it's easier to read text when there's a margin also.

But like you say, not a really big deal. There's always reader mode, or local CSS overrides.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#38

Post by dev_tty01 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #15

A number of academics seem to have very simple HTML pages like this one. See Knuth's page for example. Most of the Comp Sci professors at my school had pages like this also. Only thing I don't like about reading them on a modern wide monitor is that the lines get too long. A bit of CSS to set a max width and a margin and they'd be near-perfect. Fortunately there's reader mode.

>Fortunately there's reader mode.

Yes, this. Given my older eyesight, having reader mode set to an easily legible larger size makes lots of simple web pages much more readable for me.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#39

Post by twobitshifter »

>I joined Bell Labs in 1967, following my father, Alistair E. Ritchie, who had a long career there. His most visible public accomplishment was as co-author of The Design of Switching Circuits, with W. Keister and S. Washburn; it was an influential book on switching theory and logic design just before the transistor era.

This and the part about Bell Labs transmogrifying around Richie through the years makes me wonder how many of Richie’s accomplishments were due to Bell and what could he have done outside of Bell on his own path? I’m thinking that living in an attic while accomplishing great CS feats is a delicate balance that might have only happened at Bell with his parents support. But is there another timeline where he sees the weaknesses at Bell and ends up somewhere else in Silicon Valley?

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#40

Post by noisy_boy »

SoftTalker wrote: post #15

A number of academics seem to have very simple HTML pages like this one. See Knuth's page for example. Most of the Comp Sci professors at my school had pages like this also. Only thing I don't like about reading them on a modern wide monitor is that the lines get too long. A bit of CSS to set a max width and a margin and they'd be near-perfect. Fortunately there's reader mode.

Apart from the point of reflow mentioned in sibling comments, it is also less distracting. I am not wowed by the beauty and cleverness of the CSS, so I'm actually paying 100% attention to the content.
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