l****n
发帖数: 6896 | 1 Dennis Ritchie, father of Unix and C, dies
http://www.zdnet.com/news/dennis-ritchie-father-of-unix-and-c-d
Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C programming language and co-creator of the
Unix operating system, has died aged 70.
While the introduction of Intel's 4004 microprocessor in 1971 is widely
regarded as a key moment in modern computing, the contemporaneous birth of
the C programming language is less well known. Yet the creation of C has as
much claim, if not more, to be the true seminal moment of IT as we know it;
it sits at the heart of programming — and in the hearts of programmers —
as the quintessential expression of coding elegance, power, simplicity and
portability.
Its inventor, Dennis Ritchie, whose death after a long illness was reported
on Wednesday and confirmed on Thursday by Bell Labs, similarly embodied a
unique yet admirable approach to systems design: a man with a lifelong focus
on making software that satisfied the intellect while freeing programmers
to create their dreams.
In a statement, Jeong Kim, president of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, said: "
Dennis was well loved by his colleagues at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, and
will be greatly missed. He was truly an inspiration to all of us, not just
for his many accomplishments, but because of who he was as a friend, an
inventor, and a humble and gracious man. We would like to express our
deepest sympathies to the Ritchie family, and to all who have been touched
in some way by Dennis."
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was born in Bronxville, New York, on 9 September,
1941, and grew up in New Jersey, where his father, Alistair Ritchie, worked
as a switching systems engineer for Bell Laboratories. Ritchie went to
Harvard University and received his degree in Physics in 1963.
It was at Harvard that Ritchie first encountered a computer, attending a
lecture on Univac 1 that captured his imagination. He moved to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the first shifts away from the
mainframe to smaller, cheaper computers were being ardently investigated,
and thence in 1967 to Bell Labs — birthplace of the transistor and, at the
time, one of the most important centres of digital innovation in the world.
Multics to Unix
Bell Labs was the home of the Multics project. Multics was an operating
system that would replace the idea of batch processing (where programs were
run one at a time from a stack of cards by an operator) with interactivity (
where the programmer or user themselves had complete control during the
writing or use of software). The lab was also home to Kenneth Thompson, who
swiftly became one of Ritchie's primary collaborators.
When Bell Labs stopped work on Multics, Thompson and Ritchie were loath to
abandon the ideas of interaction and collaboration that had been key to its
design. Thompson began work on a successor, called Unix, and Ritchie soon
joined in.
Having persuaded Bell Labs to buy one of the most advanced small computers
of the time, a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11, on the back of a
promise to write a word-processing system for the patent department, the
pair instead created the modern operating system. Unix spread within Bell
Labs and was announced to the world in 1973.
C programming language
The mid-'70s were a period of great experimentation and variation in
computer hardware design, which made life difficult for software writers who
had to either limit their programs to running on one particular device or
spend a great deal of time and energy recreating their work for each new
platform.
In response to this problem, Ritchie designed a computer language, C, that
could be quickly and easily moved between different hardware. Programs that
were written in C, provided they followed the rules, would then run with
little or no modification on any computer that could itself run C.
Thompson and Ritchie then rewrote Unix in C, giving the operating system the
same ease of portability. Programmers could then learn one operating system
, one set of tools and one language, and find those skills nearly
universally applicable. Likewise, once a hardware manufacturer had put C on
its new design, the machine could use a vast pool of existing software and
talent. One side effect of this was that Unix became the natural home for
experimental, then practical, inter-networking between different systems.
Thus were created all the key aspects of the environment within which
computing became the economic and cultural force that subsequently reshaped
— and continues to reshape — the world.
This revolution was much enhanced by Ritchie's collaboration with Brian
Kernighan on The C Programming Language. Otherwise known as K&R, this slim
book, published in 1978, acted as both a concise definition of C and a
peerless introduction to the style and techniques of programming in that
language. It remains a source of inspiration and practical help to
programmers to this day.
Spiritual descendants
Unix and C's direct and spiritual descendants cannot be counted, but include
Linux, Android, Mac OS, iOS, JavaScript, C++, the genius of the internet
and a world full of developers. Likewise, legal restrictions on how Bell
Labs and its parent, AT&T, could commercially exploit software — an
antitrust ruling prevented standard licensing — meant that the ideas and,
often, the actual code underlying Unix and C became a de facto open system.
Ritchie had the lifestyle and habits to match his position as an early guru
of IT. Long-haired and bearded, and famously more owl than lark, he started
work at midday in his industry-standard chaotic office, emerging late in the
evening to go home and carry on working through to the small hours at the
end of a leased line connected to the Bell Labs computers.
In later life, having become a manager, he could sometimes be seen in the
wild before lunchtime, if meetings demanded it. His life and work were
entirely intertwined; a man celebrated for his gentle wit and gentle ways,
nothing about him could be considered separate from his lifelong fascination
with computing.
He ultimately became head of Lucent Technology Systems's software research
department, retiring in 2007. By then, he and Thompson had received many
industry awards, including the ACM Turing Prize in 1983 and the 1998 US
National Medal of Technology.
His ideas live on, in the rudest of health, at the centre of modern
operating system design, in new programming languages, and in every electron
and bit of open systems.
Rupert Goodwins' profile
.. | l****n
发帖数: 6896 | 2 They all made a dent on human evoluation. | l****n
发帖数: 6896 | 3 Steve Jobs 擅于把产品做得非常 sexy（很奇怪前两天这里一堆关于SJ的讨论，却没人
用到 sexy 这个字形容他）；但 Ritchie 那一国的人，却擅于将东西做得小而优美，
small and elegant。SJ 比较向消费者主义，而 Ritchie 则更 artful。
文章中形容 Ritchie 是个长发、蓄胡须的人，此形象很符合那一代的挨踢民工，基本
上都是 hippie，穿拖鞋不洗澡，抱着吉它唱 We shall overcome 的那种 free spirit
。遥想当年硅谷满地都是这种西皮，想想都觉得好笑。而今天的挨踢民工虽然上班还是
穿牛仔裤甚至短裤，但那种 free spirit 的精神则不复见，脑袋里更多的是房贷、小
孩、股票、奖金、升迁这些东西 -- 在上一代的 IT 民工眼里，可能会认为市侩、世俗
吧？ | a********e
发帖数: 5779 | 4 Re
spirit
【在 l****n 的大作中提到】
: Steve Jobs 擅于把产品做得非常 sexy（很奇怪前两天这里一堆关于SJ的讨论，却没人
: 用到 sexy 这个字形容他）；但 Ritchie 那一国的人，却擅于将东西做得小而优美，
: small and elegant。SJ 比较向消费者主义，而 Ritchie 则更 artful。
: 文章中形容 Ritchie 是个长发、蓄胡须的人，此形象很符合那一代的挨踢民工，基本
: 上都是 hippie，穿拖鞋不洗澡，抱着吉它唱 We shall overcome 的那种 free spirit
: 。遥想当年硅谷满地都是这种西皮，想想都觉得好笑。而今天的挨踢民工虽然上班还是
: 穿牛仔裤甚至短裤，但那种 free spirit 的精神则不复见，脑袋里更多的是房贷、小
: 孩、股票、奖金、升迁这些东西 -- 在上一代的 IT 民工眼里，可能会认为市侩、世俗
: 吧？
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