I find it hard to believe this story hasn't been given more attention
in the worldwide press.



On 14 October 2011 09:17, Francois PINOT  wrote:
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/13/0328230/dennis-ritchie-creator-of-c-programming-language-passed-away
>
> I like to think that the C in Csound is dedicated to him.
>
> Francois Pinot
>


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On 10/14/2011 06:19 AM, Rory Walsh wrote:
> I find it hard to believe this story hasn't been given more attention
> in the worldwide press.
>
>
>
> On 14 October 2011 09:17, Francois PINOT  wrote:
>> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/13/0328230/dennis-ritchie-creator-of-c-programming-language-passed-away
>>
>> I like to think that the C in Csound is dedicated to him.
>>
>> Francois Pinot
>>
>>

I looked again at my copy of The C Programming Language and thought 
about the tremendous influence of that one small book.

And then there's Unix.

Did anyone on this list meet and/or know him ? The Wikipedia page is a 
bit slim too.

Best,

dp



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on 2011-10-14 at 11:19 Rory Walsh wrote:

>I find it hard to believe this story hasn't been given more attention
>in the worldwide press.

the sad, the terribly sad part of it is that it is so easy to believe...
after all, he wasn't a multimillionaire that got rich selling fashionable
gadgets. he was a real benefactor of humankind, and we seem not to care
about those.


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We might care but the vast majority of people have no idea who he was
or the impact he had on modern computing. Just look at the number of
computing companies world wide that have cashed in on his ideas. Ideas
he shared freely with the world. The CEOs of these multi-national
companies will be remembered forever, while those who lay the corner
stones of their empire slip through the sands of time. But hey, there
is not much point dwelling on it. This is just the way things are.

On 14 October 2011 13:01, luis jure  wrote:
>
> on 2011-10-14 at 11:19 Rory Walsh wrote:
>
>>I find it hard to believe this story hasn't been given more attention
>>in the worldwide press.
>
> the sad, the terribly sad part of it is that it is so easy to believe...
> after all, he wasn't a multimillionaire that got rich selling fashionable
> gadgets. he was a real benefactor of humankind, and we seem not to care
> about those.
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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I'd like to weigh in on this...

K&R was the most important book in my own education on computing. I
used it to teach myself C, and I was able to do that thanks to the
clarity and concision of the book. Since I never took a course in
algorithms and data structures, the exposition of library functions in
K&R served that purpose for me as well.

"Real software" is written in C and C++, and as for C++ it is based on
C lock, stock, and barrel, because there was no reason to fix it,
because odd though it looked, it was not broken.

Then there's Unix. Unix set the pattern for modern operating systems.
Windows and a few IBM mainframes are now the only holdouts to
operating systems based on Unix, which of course include Linux and OS
X, not to mention Android and iOS. For "real computing," people use
some Unix-based system. I'm pretty sure that in the long run, Windows
will go away and all operating systems in use will descend from Unix.

Then there's Ritchie's long career overseeing research at Lucent
("Bell Labs")...

Then there is the hacker culture and the free software/open source
mentality that was born from the early days of Unix, which without too
much argument is not just a lot of fun, but a bulwark of liberty these
days.

Obviously Csound is written in C and some parts in C++ as, basically,
a Unix command, so Csound itself was born and grew up in Ritchie's
world... and now also has moved into the open source part of that
world.

Everyone who uses a computer today sees Dennis Ritchie's hand in every
pixel and every keystroke. He was one of the five or six creators of
the DNA of the modern world, which is networked computing on the basis
of statically typed, compiled programs. Even if you use Windows, it is
written in C and C++.

Unlike as with Steve Jobs, there simply does not seem to be any
downside to Dennis Ritchie. He didn't try to set up any gateways or
monopolies. He didn't seek fame. He just did his job, did it very
well, and tried to keep the focus on computer science research in an
open and collaborative community, which ended up making vital ideas
available to all. His life was a pure gift and a transcendent
expression of the power of good engineering... for good.

Requiescat in pace, Dennis M. Ritchie.

Mike

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Rory Walsh  wrote:
> We might care but the vast majority of people have no idea who he was
> or the impact he had on modern computing. Just look at the number of
> computing companies world wide that have cashed in on his ideas. Ideas
> he shared freely with the world. The CEOs of these multi-national
> companies will be remembered forever, while those who lay the corner
> stones of their empire slip through the sands of time. But hey, there
> is not much point dwelling on it. This is just the way things are.
>
> On 14 October 2011 13:01, luis jure  wrote:
>>
>> on 2011-10-14 at 11:19 Rory Walsh wrote:
>>
>>>I find it hard to believe this story hasn't been given more attention
>>>in the worldwide press.
>>
>> the sad, the terribly sad part of it is that it is so easy to believe...
>> after all, he wasn't a multimillionaire that got rich selling fashionable
>> gadgets. he was a real benefactor of humankind, and we seem not to care
>> about those.
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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on 2011-10-14 at 13:46 Rory Walsh wrote:

>The CEOs of these multi-national companies will be remembered forever,
>while those who lay the corner stones of their empire slip through the
>sands of time. 

i disagree here with you. i think that posterity will eventually forget the
likes of Jobs and Gates, and will remember for ever people like Dennis
Ritchie, just as we now remember Fourier, Newton, Galileo, .........




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You're probably right, but it would nice to see them get the
recognition they deserve in their own time.

On 14 October 2011 14:52, luis jure  wrote:
>
> on 2011-10-14 at 13:46 Rory Walsh wrote:
>
>>The CEOs of these multi-national companies will be remembered forever,
>>while those who lay the corner stones of their empire slip through the
>>sands of time.
>
> i disagree here with you. i think that posterity will eventually forget the
> likes of Jobs and Gates, and will remember for ever people like Dennis
> Ritchie, just as we now remember Fourier, Newton, Galileo, .........
>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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hey

the deification of jobs post mortem is nothing unusual. there's money
to be made there. but i agree dmr is profoundly more influential for
people that actually program computers than jobs [who was, after all,
the business guy, not the tech guy (woz)].

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 08:46, Rory Walsh  wrote:
> The CEOs of these multi-national
> companies will be remembered forever, while those who lay the corner
> stones of their empire slip through the sands of time.

i wouldn't be too sure of that. none of us really knows what it will
be like in the future. if you read history [as flawed as it is], you
will find many long texts extolling the virtues of this or that
politician, religious leader, or whomever the speaker wanted to
ingratiate him or herself to. and we don't know those people at all.

ceos of big companies are not the kinds of people we tell stories
about. criminal ceos [madoff] on the other hand, well, everybody loves
a good thriller.

RIP dmr

I do not believe Dennis Ritchie has been ignored in recent days. In
fact, I find quite the opposite to be true. The circles I run in are
very tech centric. I’ve been reading much praise for Ritchie in the
very community he helped bring to life. He has earned great respect
from his peers and generations to come, and there is no better way I
know of to honor his memory than this.

Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was a modern day rockstar. He helped
bridge a major gap between computer technologies and a population. He
directly influenced our culture by designing devices that are
accessible to everyone, including my mother. For this reason, Jobs is
a household name, and has been long before his death. So naturally, he
receives more postmortem mainstream media attention.

I bring this up not to prove that Jobs is better than Ritchie, but
because the things he touched in life are far more transparent. My 5
year old daughter can easily navigate her way on an ipad, is familiar
with most of the Pixar films and has even played Break-Out. It’ll be
years before she is experienced enough to know what a Unix is.

In my personal opinion, the computer I’m writing this on is a product
of both Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs. Countless others have also
contributed when you realize everyone, including both Ritchie and
Jobs, stands on the shoulders of those who came before them. Nothing
is created in a vacuum tube.

So let us not compare the lives of two people whom both have had a
fundamental role in designing the world we find ourselves in today, as
this honors neither.


On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 6:56 AM, john saylor  wrote:
> hey
>
> the deification of jobs post mortem is nothing unusual. there's money
> to be made there. but i agree dmr is profoundly more influential for
> people that actually program computers than jobs [who was, after all,
> the business guy, not the tech guy (woz)].
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 08:46, Rory Walsh  wrote:
>> The CEOs of these multi-national
>> companies will be remembered forever, while those who lay the corner
>> stones of their empire slip through the sands of time.
>
> i wouldn't be too sure of that. none of us really knows what it will
> be like in the future. if you read history [as flawed as it is], you
> will find many long texts extolling the virtues of this or that
> politician, religious leader, or whomever the speaker wanted to
> ingratiate him or herself to. and we don't know those people at all.
>
> ceos of big companies are not the kinds of people we tell stories
> about. criminal ceos [madoff] on the other hand, well, everybody loves
> a good thriller.
>
> RIP dmr
>
> --
> \js [http://or8.net/~johns/] : "What started with a kind of poetry
> turned into social war." -CR
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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>
>



-- 
codehop.com | #code #art #music


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hi

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 12:11, Jacob Joaquin  wrote:
> So let us not compare the lives of two people whom both have had a
> fundamental role in designing the world we find ourselves in today, as
> this honors neither.

?

people always compare stuff. this is learning. this is part of having
a working intelligence.

talking about people after they have died is an honor in a way, even
if you are saying 'bad' things about them. you spend energy
remembering moments, putting them into words. this is part of human
culture.

have you never compared einstein with newton? varese with zappa? [and so on]

My bad, comparisons are fine. I guess I've been seeing many Ritchie
posts where the authors feel compelled to compare him to Jobs, as they
need prove to the world that Ritchie's work was more important, which
is absolutely true in many of our own personal lives. And that was
wrong of me to project this onto this thread. Though I guess the two
points I was reaching for were: 1. Ritchie's accomplishments stand on
their own. 2. We shouldn't be surprised that Steve Jobs got way more
attention in the media since he was common a household name.

I do predict that Jobs will not be forgotten by history.


On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 10:26 AM, john saylor  wrote:
> hi
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 12:11, Jacob Joaquin  wrote:
>> So let us not compare the lives of two people whom both have had a
>> fundamental role in designing the world we find ourselves in today, as
>> this honors neither.
>
> ?
>
> people always compare stuff. this is learning. this is part of having
> a working intelligence.
>
> talking about people after they have died is an honor in a way, even
> if you are saying 'bad' things about them. you spend energy
> remembering moments, putting them into words. this is part of human
> culture.
>
> have you never compared einstein with newton? varese with zappa? [and so on]
>
> --
> \js [http://or8.net/~johns/] : "What started with a kind of poetry
> turned into social war." -CR
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
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>
>



-- 
codehop.com | #code #art #music


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Op 14/10/2011 14:01, luis jure schreef:
> on 2011-10-14 at 11:19 Rory Walsh wrote:
>
>> I find it hard to believe this story hasn't been given more attention
>> in the worldwide press.
> the sad, the terribly sad part of it is that it is so easy to believe...
> after all, he wasn't a multimillionaire that got rich selling fashionable
> gadgets. he was a real benefactor of humankind, and we seem not to care
> about those.

Sadly that is very typical. Norman Borlaug died shortly after Michael 
Jackson, but hardly anyone knew, although it is estimated that he saved 
a billion lives. 

Mark



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