Dennis Ritchie Dead at 70

RightPaddock · Post by **RightPaddock** » 2011 Oct 17, 04:07

Dennis Ritchie died last week, co-developer of C with Kernighan at Bell, and a close colleague of Ken Thompson with whom he developed the real Unix.

Its already been said that "C is a poster child for why it's essential to keep those people who know a thing can't be done from bothering the people who are doing it."

The NYT did an editorial, and theRegister did an Obituary

IMO Dennis was more important than Jobs, he was also a nicer person (yes, I met both of them, knew Dennis better)

RIP Dennis old mate - god bless and thanks

Post by **nikos** » 2011 Oct 17, 06:52

IneedHelp · Post by **IneedHelp** » 2011 Oct 17, 07:59

Too bad the Internet is not filled with jokes about his death.

Tuxman · Post by **Tuxman** » 2011 Oct 20, 18:06

What jokes would even be possible here?

"Now he is DEADBEEF"? "Another great person taken by daemons"? "C††"? ...

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Oct 10, 20:06

Tuxman wrote:What jokes would even be possible here?

This, while not exactly funny (except with that odd "uncomfortable humour" that geeks seem to endemically suffer from), is perhaps itself just weird enough to qualify.

Tuxman · Post by **Tuxman** » 2012 Oct 10, 20:09

Now that's old and probably not by him. I had seen a performance video of that song a while back. Anyway, the lyrics are fine.

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Oct 10, 20:47

I just didn't "get it"... it's not funny, nor particularly clever - makes for an odd memorial, if that was the intent.

Being one who "grew up" on C (then went walkabout for 2 decades while the world passed me by, thankfully), I never fully understood why people kept inventing languages which (at the end of the day) were nothing more than "interpreted" C re-lexified anyway. Once upon a time I was forced to learn COBOL (yes, this was a long time ago) by a particularly idiotic professor who thought it would be useful for me to learn an "applied" language instead of an abstracted (non-purpose-specific) one. He was wrong. I learned it, dismissed it, and promptly dropped his class.

Then again, when I was in school everyone was suggesting that the curriculum should replace Latin with Japanese (as they were pegged to be "the new economic superpower" at the time, as if that was important). Now they say Chinese, and it's funny how I always think of Pascal when they say that. No reason in particular - other than that it always seemed like such an unhappy language once C took over, the tears of Delphi notwithstanding.

Tuxman · Post by **Tuxman** » 2012 Oct 10, 21:14

I wish today's students would learn C more.
But their curricula prefer Java for whatever reason.

Java, the language of the poor.

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Oct 10, 22:22

Tuxman wrote:But their curricula prefer Java for whatever reason.

When curriculae are subject to whatever propaganda is popular that year (buzz-words like "cross-platform" and "device-scaling"), the people who randomly make decisions about what is to be taught inevitably follow the trend, regardless of the actual value of what is taught. As ever in organised education, the object is to create economically obedient and productive automatons - the question of actual value is never considered, so long as the Gods named Immediate Convenience and Immediately Useful are given their ritual human sacrifices.

One of these days people'll figure out that the convenience of the JIT paradigm (yes, I know that's not what Java calls it, but it amounts to the same thing) becomes a myth when those to whom it was taught skipped the whole chapter entitled Fundamentals as they were in too much of a hurry to "get to the good stuff".

Programming pseudo-knowledge these days is a commodity like any other, and as long as it continues to make money, no one will notice that something's missing in these kids.

Which, we will note, has been the generational complaint of the Journeyman ever since the industrial revolution starting revolving back in the 19th century.

FrizzleFry · Post by **FrizzleFry** » 2012 Oct 10, 22:29

Aren't Android apps written in Java?

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Oct 10, 22:45

Yup - which I think somehow proves the point about it being the language of the poor. ("Apps" being the contemporary money-making equivalent of shaking one's head with profound sadness.

)

Tuxman · Post by **Tuxman** » 2012 Oct 10, 23:42

During my studies I currently learn something about Android development. They are written in some Java dialect indeed. Interestingly, the core system is still mostly C/C++.

I wonder if it would not be much easier just to use C/C++ instead of a dedicated JVM.

FrizzleFry · Post by **FrizzleFry** » 2012 Oct 11, 03:50

Java is much easier to learn than C/C++ and it is designed to be platform independent so it makes sense to me that it was chosen for app development on Android which runs on many different devices.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Java, the language of the poor."

Tuxman · Post by **Tuxman** » 2012 Oct 11, 08:50

C(++) applications are platform-independent to, you'll just have to recompile them. Sometimes. Also, I can't see how Java is easier. Sure, people's preferred Java IDE (eclipse) writes half the code for you. That does not make the language easier, it only allows people to know less about their language when they write something in it. Meh.

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Oct 11, 09:33

Tuxman wrote:C(++) applications are platform-independent to, you'll just have to recompile them. Sometimes.

"Sometimes" is the operative term there - and not very often is the response ("Does this work on WINE?"). Platform independent is supposed to mean form factoring, etc, when it comes to hardware (not explicitly phones), so if you automatically have the Java environment, you only need to know rudimentary things about the hardware API, and barely that.

Tuxman wrote:Also, I can't see how Java is easier.

Java is far easier - it shares a similar syntax so people assume it's similar underneath, but it's nothing of the sort - basically there's no memory management, no "real" pointer manipulation (meaning addressing; just superficial stuff for objects) and it's devoid of elegance because (as you say) it assumes so much.

The problem I have with it is not that it's not useful for what it's intended for (FrizzleFry's right: "best tool for the job" philosophy) - it's that the kids who learn it now are never exposed to a real programming language - it's the equivalent of white-bread... goes with everything, has no depth, and people who don't know any better assume it's what makes the world run. They often don't even know that the JRE is written in C, which is rather laughable. Idiot-proofing a language cannot improve it, it can only dumb-it-down, and thus dumb-down its users in the end.