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Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

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Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#91

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #42
dang wrote: post #10

> My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural languages better than functional ones. I wonder if that last bit was as unfashionable a statement when he made it as it would be now.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#92

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

IncRnd wrote: post #54
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…

Ritchie: I liked procedural languages better than functional ones. ChrisMarshallNY: I suspect that he understood functional languages quite well. He just didn't like them. Your statement doesn't follow from Ritchie's words that you quoted. Preference of A over B does not have the logical consequence that B is disliked. It doesn't even imply that A is intensely liked.

Fair point.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#93

Post by dang »

rsc wrote: post #62
dang wrote: post #10

> My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural languages better than functional ones. I wonder if that last bit was as unfashionable a statement when he made it as it would be now.

Is it an unfashionable statement now? The vast majority of the world's programs are written in procedural languages, and that situation does not look likely to change for the foreseeable future.

(I should know better than to post ambiguous one-liners late at night.)

It's certainly not an uncommon preference, but it's an unfashionable statement, at least among the intellectual circles that programming language designers with PhDs (or almost-PhDs!) tend to belong to. That's why I was interested to read it there. I've long had a joke, when asked if I prefer FP or OO, to say "I prefer imperative programming". It's funny because of that fashion. What I was wondering was whether said fashion was in place by the late 90s when dmr apparently wrote this, in which case maybe there was a trace of a joke there as well.

Edit: having read more of the OP, it seems to me deliciously apropos that his dissertation involved replacing recursive logic with loops.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#94

Post by karmakaze »

"he shows that assessing loop programs by their depth of loops is exactly equivalent to Grzegorczyk’s hierarchy. The rate of growth of primitive recursive functions is indeed related to their computational complexity, in fact, they are identical."

"I would have loved to collaborate with him, because he seemed like a smart, nice guy who’d be fun to work with, but yeah, you know, he was already doing other things. He was staying up all night playing Spacewar!”

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#95

Post by bch »

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?

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#96

Post by coliveira »

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?

The image also has a cat.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#97

Post by coliveira »

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?

above the magician, one can see a lot of pipes.

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#98

Post by gwern »

gwern wrote: post #69
Taniwha wrote: post #18

So what would happen if we took up a collection, produced a bound copy, and sent it off to Harvard?

I like this idea. So I took a look at their policies and it seems the official Harvard thesis printer ( https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/student-handbook/dissertation-g... ) is Acme, which has an individual-oriented website: https://www.thesisondemand.com/ Using their calculator, a single 181pg\* BW printed thesis is ~$45. That seems cheap enough for a joke for me! But it looks like one will need to add some additional m…

After reading tankenmate's link, it seems this has already been tried & would be pointless; the library would just reject it. Oh well!

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#99

Post by lioeters »

faizshah wrote: post #80
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".

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...

Seeing how the image link has expired, here's a decent one: https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg

Re: Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

#100

Post by acidburnNSA »

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?

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

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