Everything Else

Today I'm sorry to learn that DMR passed away this weekend. It's hard to overestimate his contributions.

https://plus.google.com/101960720994009 ... NuEDDYfvKP

Here is a great two minute presentation of Unix with DMR himself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVQTPbD6UY

Pontus wrote: Today I'm sorry to learn that DMR passed away this weekend. It's hard to overestimate his contributions.

Yet you can expect that, unlike Steve Jobs, he won't get an obituary in the media.

dennis ritchie, a significant conrtibutor in unix/c is now history.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/13/dennis_ritchie/

Truly sad news, my condolences to his family and loved ones.

Many of us wouldn't be here without his contributions.

My first year at college we did VAX/VMS Pascal, and I just wanted to be with all the cool kids programming in 'C' on Unix.
I have a little more perspective now, but I had a lot of fun time writing C, and as a systems programming language, if you exercise a little restraint, it rocks...

Dennis created something very special...

RIP

Mark.

urbancamo wrote: Dennis created something very special...

RIP

Mark.

And linsux destroyed it. I still have two 9-track tapes from Bell Labs, one labeled UNIX Operating System 6th Edition and one labeled Mini Unix Operating System 6th Edition, both dated 2/19/82.

miod wrote:

Pontus wrote: Today I'm sorry to learn that DMR passed away this weekend. It's hard to overestimate his contributions.

Yet you can expect that, unlike Steve Jobs, he won't get an obituary in the media.

Of course not. Olsen didn't, and the Woz probably won't . Steve was all about marketing.

Clark might get a mention because of Jurassic Park.

We lost a Giant.

If you consider the percentage of systems and devices out there that are either:
- Running an OS with heritage that goes back to the original UNIX
- Running an OS that is an independent reimplementation of the UNIX design
- Running some software written in C
he clearly had a far greater impact on modern computing than Jobs and most others.

So far, the only reference in mainstream media I've seen is the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15287391

Don't want to play down DMR in any way - quite to the contrary, without him there wouldn't probably even be Nekochan today. I bow to him for his co-development of Unix. However, regarding his C - sternly opposed to Backus, he did not liberate us from the von Neumann style of programming at all but actually drew us only deeper into that malstrom. Of course, thanks to him, nowadays about 90% or so of source code you can get is in C/C++. But that was never the right thing at all...

That is a bit of a chicken an egg problem, no? C was fundamental to the development of Unix. You could not have one without the other.

The whole "doing the right thing" is a highly subjective qualitative estimation, which can lead to catastrophic results sometimes. The motivation for C was a study in tradeoffs between portability/performance/expressivity for a systems language, to be used to design and implement a portable/multiuser operating system. What eventually became Unix.


It is kind of unfair to piggyback the "liberation from Von Neumann architectures" as a responsibility under the context C was developed and intended for, specially since Backus was as responsible (if not more) for their entrenchment.


Not saying that C or Unix are perfect. But I think your critique was a bit unfair.

R-ten-K wrote: That is a bit of a chicken an egg problem, no? C was fundamental to the development of Unix. You could not have one without the other.

From what I have read recently. UNIX was implemented first in B or BCPL or some language like that around 1968/1969 and then rewritten in C and assembler and released in 1971.

I can't find the cartoon with the egg and chicken in bed smoking ... and one them says "well that answers that question".

R.

Wow, I didn't C this happening so soon.

There are a respectful number of obituaries:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15287391
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/13 ... assed-away
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/20 ... and-on.ars

PymbleSoftware wrote: They had object-orientated code in C by use of structs and function pointers.

Similarly, Xt Intrinsics & Motif, MS-Windows & OS/2 PM.

I can't use the original Mac as an example as that was 68k assembler & pascal, but it achieved the same.

porter wrote:

PymbleSoftware wrote: They had object-orientated code in C by use of structs and function pointers.

Similarly, Xt Intrinsics & Motif, MS-Windows & OS/2 PM.

I can't use the original Mac as an example as that was 68k assembler & pascal, but it achieved the same.

... Looks at the shelves and and shelves of X11 books not opened in years and goes ... oh... yeah.... You are right.

R.

Actually, originally Thompson set out to create a FORTRAN compiler for "First Edition" Unix but then instead created B [with the help of Ritchie; the "Second Edition" Unix kernel was written in it] which was only later developed into C by Ritchie.

Completely OT again [but as Ritchie was not only the creator of C but also the co-developer of Unix maybe admissible]: AFAIK, Microsoft - before they embarked predominately on DOS etc. - actually was some sort of "Unix"-oriented company as well [Xenix]. I find it unfortunate that they withdraw themselves from that opportunity - otherwise, the PC market today could be probably totally *nix and there wouldn't have been any need for Linux [which just fills the niche Microsoft left open]...Ritchie would have been satisfied, I'm sure.

Oskar45 wrote: Actually, originally Thompson set out to create a FORTRAN compiler for "First Edition" Unix but then instead created B [with the help of Ritchie; the "Second Edition" Unix kernel was written in it] which was only later developed into C by Ritchie.

Completely OT again [but as Ritchie was not only the creator of C but also the co-developer of Unix maybe admissible]: AFAIK, Microsoft - before they embarked predominately on DOS etc. - actually was some sort of "Unix"-oriented company as well [Xenix]. I find it unfortunate that they withdraw themselves from that opportunity - otherwise, the PC market today could be probably totally *nix and there wouldn't have been any need for Linux [which just fills the niche Microsoft left open]...Ritchie would have been satisfied, I'm sure.

I think I read somewhere, quite some time ago now that when mickeysoft sold XENIX to SCO, (or was SCO spun out of MSFT?) part of the "goodwill" (intangible assets) was an undertaking the Microsoft would never ever reenter the UNIX market place as some part of a non-complete clause. But then I am not a lawyer and I don't recall where I read that. Microsoft vowed to destroy UNIX, I think such was stated even in their advertising. I also read that they were still doing work on PDP or VAX, and cross-compiling (for DOS?) long after everyone else moved on, http://www.microsoft.com was run on FreeBSD and apache for years even while they were selling IIS, WIndows95 was developed in Canada by the outsourcing company that appears in the Copyright list before Microsoft and SCO when XENIX boots and the original MS-DOS/PC-DOS was developed as a quick hack of what he long over due CP/M-86 could/should have been by a company in Seattle before DRI released CP/M-86. MS-DOS 1.0 ran for about 10 to 15 minutes before locking solid or reseting the machine. But then I never really experienced MS-DOS before I think 2.0 or maybe 3.3. 386BSD was a free UNIX based on articles in Dr Dobbs Journal. Guys around campus put up "Free the Berkley Devil" posters as well as plastic California number plates with "UNIX:Live free or die" on their walls. FREENIX was a movement and bound to happen Linux just got there first. There was MINIX, the XINU book and other things happening but it was all very academic.

R.

PymbleSoftware wrote: FREENIX was a movement and bound to happen Linux just got there first.

What alot of people think of as Linux, is actually GNU.

Linux just slotted in where the Hurd was supposed to be, as it got stuck in a tar-pit.