Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website • Hacker News Board

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#51

Post by gonzus » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 7:38 AM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #46

dev_tty01 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Why would some special mode be needed? I use ctrl+ to get a font size I like, then I set my browser window to a size where the text reflows to what I like. HTML is made to make it easy for the reader. And equally easy on mobile (phone, tablet)

I wish I could upvote you a thousand times. I hate it when pages have a fixed width -- that's what reflow is for. Let ME choose how I want to read the content.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#52

Post by jd3 » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 7:42 AM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #39

>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…

Read awhile ago that another well known former Bell Labs CSRC member was the son of a Bell Labs researcher in the acoustics department.

It's fascinating to see how many modern distinguished researchers were fostered and mentored in their early lives through a familial & supportive environment which contributed in their path toward innovation; such a unique privilege shared by a diminishing cadre that were lucky enough to grow up in that vanishing analog world of black ties and a lifelong devotion to your research and work.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#53

Post by Akronymus » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 8:01 AM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #46

dev_tty01 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Why would some special mode be needed? I use ctrl+ to get a font size I like, then I set my browser window to a size where the text reflows to what I like. HTML is made to make it easy for the reader. And equally easy on mobile (phone, tablet)

Tbf, I HAVE encountered sites where zooming in makes it even less readable/prevents zooming/adjusts the font size to be roughly the same when you zoom in.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#54

Post by taopai » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 9:50 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #23

taopai wrote: post #20

"My undergraduate experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be a physicist, and that computers were quite neat." Thank god I am not the only one!

In fairness, I'm not sure the return to society of minting another physicist is all that high. Many seem to go into computing anyway.

Well I think undergrad just stamps a label in your forehead. What you do in your free time, most important, what job you get and who seriously you jump into it is what determines your value to society.

Carsten Dominik, another physicist, was the creator of org-mode. I don't think physicist have an advantage over CS graduates, in fact reading code written by physicists is like watching and horror movie. But everyone can contribute a tiny bit.

You are right, a lot of my friends, who studied physics, take the jobs CS undergrads don't want to do, and get really low salaries...

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#55

Post by Tor3 » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 11:13 AM UTC

Akronymus wrote: post #53

Tor3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would some special mode be needed? I use ctrl+ to get a font size I like, then I set my browser window to a size where the text reflows to what I like. HTML is made to make it easy for the reader. And equally easy on mobile (phone, tablet)

Tbf, I HAVE encountered sites where zooming in makes it even less readable/prevents zooming/adjusts the font size to be roughly the same when you zoom in.

Yes, and that's why just HTML (without js unwished-for enforcement) is great.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#56

Post by ori_b » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 12:40 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #6

ilaksh wrote: post #5

He mentions Plan 9. Reading that Wikipedia lead to the Inferno operating system. Which mentions a focus on portability and a file interface. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system) That reminds me of web assembly and WASI. So this is tangential but how is the component stuff in web assembly doing? It seemed like such a great idea to me but apparently, at least at one point, was somehow controversia…

Basically WebAssembly is anything but new. You can also check Burroughs, Xerox PARC Workstations, USCD Pascal, Modula-2 MeDos, IBM AS/400, TenDRA, Taos, Oberon, among many others, that have had the idea of bytecode as portable OS binaries.

Though, wasm has a high level structure that makes it a clunky compilation target. The bytecodes above improve on wasm in that regard.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#57

Post by dev_tty01 » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #46

dev_tty01 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Why would some special mode be needed? I use ctrl+ to get a font size I like, then I set my browser window to a size where the text reflows to what I like. HTML is made to make it easy for the reader. And equally easy on mobile (phone, tablet)

Yeah, sometimes I use that for a site that is otherwise well formatted but the font is just small. For sites I visit often I just save that as a site specific preference so I do agree with you in some cases.

However, with reader mode it goes straight to my preferred font size, has nice margins, and basically everything is formatted in a very readable way. It still reflows and changes width with the window, but the rest of the formatting is better as well. I really hate text that goes right to the edges of the windows with no margins. Just a personal preference, but for me the quickest path to dramatically improved readability on some sites is reader mode.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#58

Post by OldGuyInTheClub » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

rramadass wrote: post #48

OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people would stay at Bell Labs because of the culture of frictionless internal collaborations. Don't know about SV, but my senior colleagues and managers all had multiple stories of fending off Universities recruiting their staff. Being reminded them of the freewheeling open-door nature of the place that Universities could not duplicate, a lot of sought-after people stayed put. Not to mention no committee wo…

The World would be a much better place if current-day companies practiced such a culture. The way our current "Work Culture" is setup, it is destroying people's lives.

The Labs were a pressure cooker though. Not everyone was or could be a Ritchie, Thompson, Chu, or Stormer but that was the standard. Freewheeling research was only sustainable a when it had virtually unlimited funding due to the AT&T monopoly. When I got there in late 1990, the breakup had long since taken root and the culture was in flux. The AT&T business units were now being taxed to pay for R&D and they wanted returns on their investment. The VP of Research had also announced his intention to emphasize the software side (including math, CS, etc.) over hardware (physics, chemistry, materials, etc.)

The permanent members of technical staff in the physical sciences were under tremendous pressure to be both world-leading scientists while somehow being applied enough to help AT&T long distance fight off MCI and other competitors who had no R&D arms. There was no guidance on how to do this except "Well, work harder."

I will always be grateful to them for shielding me and the other postdocs from all the turmoil. It would have been very easy for them to say, "You're on your own" and look out for themselves but they always made time to talk to us and give us whatever support we needed. Needless to say, I miss that spirit.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#59

Post by ilaksh » Mon, Jun 05, 2023, 7:50 PM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #56

pjmlp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically WebAssembly is anything but new. You can also check Burroughs, Xerox PARC Workstations, USCD Pascal, Modula-2 MeDos, IBM AS/400, TenDRA, Taos, Oberon, among many others, that have had the idea of bytecode as portable OS binaries.

Though, wasm has a high level structure that makes it a clunky compilation target. The bytecodes above improve on wasm in that regard.

The high level structure is an advancement that is important for optimization.

Re: Dennis Ritchie’s page on Bell Labs website

#60

Post by ori_b » Tue, Jun 06, 2023, 10:52 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #59

ori_b wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though, wasm has a high level structure that makes it a clunky compilation target. The bytecodes above improve on wasm in that regard.

The high level structure is an advancement that is important for optimization.

It isn't; the first thing production optimizers do is throw it away.

It supposedly makes verification of SSA properties marginally faster, but that's not the bottleneck.