Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On (Wired)
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Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On (Wired)
 
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Nice article
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/thedennisritchieeffect/ -- Alfredo ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On (Wired)
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How did Dennis Ritchie's death make C a wonderful language?
-- Russ Abbott _____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles Google voice: 747-999-5105 On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Alfredo Covaleda <[hidden email]> wrote: Nice article ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On (Wired)
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You are joking. Aren't you? That's not the sense, I think that you are
not pointing to where article is doing. With fair reasons many people
is making eulogies to something that transcended. Dennis Ritchie let a
legacy which is impossible to deny. Today's software is not Fortran
descendant is C descendant. I think that's the sense. No body is
telling or asking if C is perfect. To say that programming languages had to be
better this way or that way is a good and interesting question but
doesn't change current programming languages state. If you let me say a metaphor; I am here thanks to a some rare structure appeared 3500
millions years ago: a Prokariotic cell that contained DNA freely
flowing in the citoplams. Why nucleotides?. Wasn't better other kind of
structure. Why Adenine, why Guanine. Why diphosphate. Will Structure and Function of
ancient ADN emerged 3500 millions years ago be responsible of cancer
that with high probabilities will kill me some day? (attending to
familiar history. Just an example). They are questions that really
don't matter (even if cancer actually will kill me). Is the legacy from C
to Java or C++ or PHP responsable of problems that programmers have
when are trying to code?. If today's software were Fortran
descendant, software were better?
No more than the kind of questions made for Albert Camus if were alive. ¿Why something emerged this way and not than that way? 2011/10/15 Russ Abbott <[hidden email]>
-- Alfredo ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On(Wired)
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Maybe what Russ meant is the fact that C is widely successful does not make
C a beautiful language. I would agree to this point. C was successful because it was useful, not because it was beautiful. Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is Haskell beautiful, or Lisp? I doubt it. Ruby has a certain beauty, but it is written in C (and the implementation itself is not beautiful at all). It is also really slow. However, the article was interesting. -J. ----- Original Message ----- From: Alfredo Covaleda To: [hidden email] ; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2011 10:55 AM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On(Wired) You are joking. Aren't you? That's not the sense, I think that you are not pointing to where article is doing. With fair reasons many people is making eulogies to something that transcended. Dennis Ritchie let a legacy which is impossible to deny. Today's software is not Fortran descendant is C descendant. I think that's the sense. No body is telling or asking if C is perfect. To say that programming languages had to be better this way or that way is a good and interesting question but doesn't change current programming languages state. If you let me say a metaphor; I am here thanks to a some rare structure appeared 3500 millions years ago: a Prokariotic cell that contained DNA freely flowing in the citoplams. Why nucleotides?. Wasn't better other kind of structure. Why Adenine, why Guanine. Why diphosphate. Will Structure and Function of ancient ADN emerged 3500 millions years ago be responsible of cancer that with high probabilities will kill me some day? (attending to familiar history. Just an example). They are questions that really don't matter (even if cancer actually will kill me). Is the legacy from C to Java or C++ or PHP responsable of problems that programmers have when are trying to code?. If today's software were Fortran descendant, software were better? No more than the kind of questions made for Albert Camus if were alive. ¿Why something emerged this way and not than that way? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
Re: Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On (Wired)
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In reply to this post by Alfredo Covaleda Vélez
On 10/15/2011 2:55 AM, Alfredo Covale da wrote:
> If today's software were Fortran descendant, software were better? It would probably be faster. Fortran call arguments can't alias, which means a compiler is far less constrained in changing the order of operations (e.g. running work in parallel on multiple cores or on accelerators like GPUs). Fortran 2008 has most of the features of C++ other than permissive use of raw addresses. Ritchie himself joked "the power of assembly language and the convenience of ... assembly language." One can find numerous examples of hardcore system programmers like Linus Torvalds loudly objecting to attempts to make C compilers (gcc) too smart. C is a clean small language for portable programming on hardware. I think the world have been a better place had people recognized that a long time a go and moved on. It is pretty much a given that almost any new language that has a chance of success will share properties of C, if not actual syntax. Unfortunately, properties that made for practical systems programming on a PDP/11 35 years ago are not the properties that should guide all kinds of programming today. Many of the security fixes that daily stream into your PC or Mac or Linux system basically you can blame on C (and C++) programmers, and abuse of typing. Dennis Ritchie, of course, moved systems programming forward and made the world a better place. The spectacular lack of creativity that followed can't be blamed on him. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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