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Bollweevil
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Fulshear, Texanistan
Posts: 3,361
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Steve Jobs was the visionary iman, but -rwxrwxrwx
I think Ritchie did much more important work. No Ritchie, no internet as we know it. Personally, I can live without Ipods, Iphones and Ipads but without C and Unix?? I don't think Fortan or COBOL or MSBasic or the various assembly languages from back in the day would have cut it with the internet.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/innovation/dennis-ritchie-obit-bell-labs/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6 Just my opinion anyway.
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Jack 74 911 Coupe 2.7L - K21 Option - S suspension Last edited by 74-911; 10-17-2011 at 06:34 PM.. |
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Too big to fail
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exit(0);
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"You go to the track with the Porsche you have, not the Porsche you wish you had." '03 E46 M3 '57 356A Various VWs |
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Certainly the pioneers need recognition. There was a time when I thought the only way a computer would do anything was if I punched a Fortran (it was Fortran 4 by the time I came along) routine on cards and had the them compiled and "run" to see if I'd fuched up.. I remember feeling disdain for "canned programs" that did basic calculations without you having to program them and they always worked. Like you, don't think the minor stars in the galaxy get the recognition they deserve.
OTOH, the first on-screen editor I used was called something like "edison" and it didn't have a cursor. The only way you knew where you were was to type something and see where it appeared. I can't say I had a lot of love for that POS.
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canna change law physics
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Yes, I remember writing code in 66 character lines...
Funny, my programming days pretty much ended when I started to understand the power of spreadsheets, except for some specific new VB sequences built for spreadsheets. The last Fortran program I wrote was a visual operator display editor translator. In 1987, I built an encoding system to distinguish live items from background on a computer operator display. The fortran program read the "background" file and created live object programming in the display units language. This cut down the Operator display programmng and debugging from a minimum of a week per operator display to maybe 4 hours. Subsequent changes and editing was similarly reduced and always worked. Basically, it was a program to reduce programming. A fitting tribute to FORTRAN.
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James The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the engineer adjusts the sails.- William Arthur Ward (1921-1994) Red-beard for President, 2020 |
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Registered
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Calgary Alberta, CANADA
Posts: 2,113
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No Ritchie no nothing.. I think the greatest side benefit was the rationalization of distinct platforms so finally a program in C would run anywhere..
I don't think there is a single modern OS/Language that is not rooted in C and no Kernel is not modeled after Unix... RIP Dennis Ritchie...
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We're all in the gutter,but some of us are looking at the stars. -Oscar Wilde |
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Registered
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northern VA
Posts: 1,086
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It is a shame that he left us so early. The man was a real visionary. I put my time in writing a lot of assembly language and 'C' was a huge step forward. He really left a legacy. RIP
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Free minder
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It is unbelievable how many great inventions came out of Bell Labs. The silicon solar cell, the transistor, the C language...And of course, things went downhill the government broke these great laboratories into the baby Bells in 1984. I was honored to have worked at one of them, Bellcore, which became Telcordia technologies, and is now an entity surviving on government contracts, where all the spirit of research and true innovation is long gone. I lived few miles from AT&T and Bellcore laboratories in New Jersey, and wish I could have had a long lasting career there, but these once great places of research are now what I would call ghost laboratories, where all the bright minds have escaped.
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The Tweeze
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Gilbert, AZ
Posts: 3,744
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So true. It just shows you how media and social trends have more influence than anything nowadays rather than truth and knowledge...
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Registered
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Hamburg & Vancouver
Posts: 7,693
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Quote:
Yup. You have to come to PPOT for truth and knowledge.
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_____________________ These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.—Groucho Marx |
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The Tweeze
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Gilbert, AZ
Posts: 3,744
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Touché, Dottore.
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Ritchie designed the internal combustion engine. And Jobs designed the 911 around it. They were both visionaries in different areas. Hard for me to compare the two.
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Registered
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: PNW
Posts: 2,977
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Fascinating! Thanks for posting this.
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: N. Phoenix AZ USA
Posts: 28,960
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Fortran and Cobol... eons ago this was my start on computers...
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Bollweevil
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Fulshear, Texanistan
Posts: 3,361
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Quote:
I think the more appropriate analogy would be: Quote:
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Jack 74 911 Coupe 2.7L - K21 Option - S suspension |
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B58/732
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Hot as Hell, AZ
Posts: 12,313
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More like:
Quote:
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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ I don't always talk to vegetarians--but when I do, it's with a mouthful of bacon. |
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