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UNIX is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius (or at any rate, a programmer) to understand and appreciate its simplicity.

Dennis Ritchie

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Dennis Ritchie
Age: 70 †
Born: 1941
Born: September 9
Died: 2011
Died: October 12
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Programmer
Writer
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie
A. Ritči
dmr
Dennis Ritchie
Takes
Unix
Simple
Programmer
Understand
Coherent
Programmers
Simplicity
Rate
Appreciate
Genius

More quotes by Dennis Ritchie

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It seems certain that much of the success of Unix follows from the readability, modifiability, and portability of its software.
Dennis Ritchie
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For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.
Dennis Ritchie
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The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
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Unix has retarded OS research by 10 years and linux has retarded it by 20.
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C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around.
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I listen to mostly-classical music, but mostly by radio - I'm not an audiophile.
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Some consider UNIX to be the second most important invention to come out of AT&T Bell Labs after the transistor.
Dennis Ritchie
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One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.
Dennis Ritchie
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My work was fairly theoretical. It was in recursive function theory. And in particular, hierarchies of functions in terms of computational complexity. I got involved in real computers and programming mainly by being - well, I was interested even as I came to graduate school.
Dennis Ritchie
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Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson.
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A program designed for inputs from people is usually stressed beyond breaking point by computer-generated inputs.
Dennis Ritchie
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A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do
Dennis Ritchie
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I'm not a person who particularly had heros when growing up.
Dennis Ritchie
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I've done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time. I'm a home-body and get fatigued by it fairly soon, but enjoy thinking back on experiences when I've returned and then often wish I'd arranged a longer stay in the somewhat exotic place.
Dennis Ritchie
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Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX.
Dennis Ritchie
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I've done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time.
Dennis Ritchie
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UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.
Dennis Ritchie
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C is declining somewhat in usage compared to C++, and maybe Java, but perhaps even more compared to higher-level scripting languages. It's still fairly strong for the basic system-type things.
Dennis Ritchie
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Steve Jobs has said that Xwindows is brain-damamged and will disappear in two years. He got it half-right.
Dennis Ritchie
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Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.
Dennis Ritchie