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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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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
Bells
Invention
Consider
Second
Transistor
Come
Transistors
Important
Unix
Labs
Bell

More quotes by Dennis Ritchie

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Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX.
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For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.
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Oh, I've seen copies [of Linux Journal] around the terminal room at The Labs.
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It seems certain that much of the success of Unix follows from the readability, modifiability, and portability of its software.
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Unix has retarded OS research by 10 years and linux has retarded it by 20.
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For books, I don't read much fiction, but like travel essays and good pop-science.
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I listen to mostly-classical music, but mostly by radio - I'm not an audiophile.
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.
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C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around.
Dennis Ritchie
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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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The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
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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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.
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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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UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.
Dennis Ritchie
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From an operating system research point of view, Unix is if not dead certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.
Dennis Ritchie
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Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson.
Dennis Ritchie
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Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.
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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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