5 ms·

Also, this is the guy who really made a dent in the universe. While HP was founded in a garage, the Apple Garage is the story people know. He lead passionate an

by MCRed 11y ago

Also, this is the guy who really made a dent in the universe. While HP was founded in a garage, the Apple Garage is the story people know. He lead passionate and talented people for many years to create or fundamentally transform significant industries and inventions-- everything from the GUI, the Laser Printer to the phone were hugely impacted by teams he lead... not to mention NeXT and the first real object oriented operating system. By the way, I worked at Microsoft on an object oriented operating system at the same time that Steve was leading NeXT. Microsofts effort was cancelled because it was a threat to windows, but I can say, having worked with both NeXT did it right, and microsoft totally missed the mark-- that's because of Steve inspiring innovation, as opposed to Bill Gates controlling engineering-- two very different styles of management. I mourn Steve because he was a great guy, a nice guy, and a true leader. There hasn't been another on par with him in the tech industry... interestingly the closest possible people to reach this same stature are Tim Cook and Elon Musk. One was taught by Steve and the other is another very unique light.

dragontamer 11y ago
> Also, this is the guy who really made a dent in the universe. Dennis Ritchie died around the same time as Steve Jobs, and I always found it a shame that one is remembered significantly more than the other. Creating Unix and The C Programming language counts as making "a really big dent" in the universe. But maybe that's just me.
- pekk 11y ago
  More people have a stronger emotional response to iPhones, which Steve Jobs is identified as being responsible for.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    I recognize this. But Hacker News is a technology forum. I'd hope people would recognize the relevance of Dennis Ritchie to our field around here. Alas, popularity is a weird thing.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Mourning is not a lifetime achievement award. Frankly, when I hear people comparing Ritchie to Jobs, the (unkind) thought that pops into my head is: "This person feels nothing about either death, but feels strongly that people should know how much smarter they are than everyone else". Increasingly elaborate justifications, for instance about how important Ritchie is to the work people on HN do, don't help that.
      - randallsquared 11y ago
        > Mourning is not a lifetime achievement award. It certainly is one metric by which you could measure lifetime achievement. I don't really understand the apparent strength of your reaction against it, though.
      - dragontamer 11y ago
        > Increasingly elaborate justifications, for instance about how important Ritchie is to the work people on HN do, don't help that Co-Inventor of C and Unix doesn't need any explanation, and is hardly "elaborate" if you work in this field at all.
        tptacek 11y ago
        I get it. You know who Dennis Ritchie is.
        dragontamer 11y ago
        And I would expect everyone else around here to know who he is too. I'm not exactly sure why you are being hostile to me.
- acqq 11y ago
  It's just you, as you know what C and Unix are. Most of the people holding their "smartphones" (of which not a single one is significantly different from iPhone, compared to the state before 2007) from this estimate: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/6-1b-smartphone-users-globally-by-2020-overtaking-basic-fixed-phone-subscriptions/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/6-1b-smartphone-users-globa... ("6.1B Smartphone Users Globally By 2020") will never even hear either of C or of Unix.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    Indeed. But where would iPhones be if it were not for the fundamental building blocks of: * File-based Operating Systems * The C Programming language (which Objective C is built on top of) * Unix (of which Mac OSX is built on top of) * Darwin (of which both Mac OSX and iOS are built on top of) Even if the masses don't understand the technical achievement, I would hope that a website named "Hacker News" would understand the scope of Dennis Ritchie's contribution to our field.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      You want to make a list of important inventions whose inventors aren't celebrated in pop culture? It'll be a long and tedious one.
      - acqq 11y ago
        Exactly. Just one example: John Bardeen. Invented the transistor -- what of today's things would work without it? The CPU in the device you use probably has a billion of them inside. Also got Nobel twice. And who knows about him?
- akamaka 11y ago
  Steve Jobs spent 12 years creating, funding, and leading a risky company that built a UNIX implementation that has become one of the most widely used. I think the creating OS X is in the same league as creating UNIX or Linux. Sure, Jobs wasn't a coder like Ritchie or Torvalds, but it's not like they didn't also have a lot of help.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    > I think the creating OS X is in the same league Where are the multiple Hollywood movies about Dennis Ritchie's life? It's not that Steve Jobs is seen as "equivalent" to Dennis Ritchie. It is that in popular culture, Steve Job's "worshipers" have completely blown away Dennis Ritchie's accomplishments. And even around here on Hacker News, there is a lot more press and talk about Steve Jobs's life story than Dennis Ritchie's life story.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > And even around here on Hacker News, there is a lot more press and talk about Steve Jobs's life story than Dennis Ritchie's life story. Hacker News is -- despite the name, and predictably given its sponsorship -- rather (though not entirely!) centered on VC-funded startup culture. Steve Jobs's accomplishments in monetizing technology are, in many respects, much more what that culture is focused on than Ritchie's accomplishments in developing technology.
      - akamaka 11y ago
        I know you're addressing "the culture" here in general, but seeing as I'm part of it, I really want to make clear it's not merely monetization that impresses me about Steve Jobs. He spent over a decade heavily involved in developing the NextStep platform, which has been heavily influential on all of the computing environments we use today. There would be no Windows 95, no KDE or Gnome as we know them without him. His accomplishments before 1997 were already enough to put him in a hacker hall of fame, regardless of whether that's what he's most famous for.
  - 11y ago
- coldtea 11y ago
  I'd rather the C programming language wasn't created -- we'd have a better Algol, Pascal etc derivative in its place, and way less buffer overflows...
- cafard 11y ago
  I was interested to see that Dennis Ritchie got a fair-sized notice in the NY Times Sunday Magazine's end of year "The Lives They Lived Section". I don't know that it was much different size from what they gave Steve Jobs.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    https://steveffisher.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/steve-jobs-magazine-cover-tributes/ https://steveffisher.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/steve-jobs-mag... That's more or less my memory of the magazine stands. Now with that said, I do agree that Steve Jobs did a good job bringing Apple back from its ashes. But the amount of cult-like enthusiasm over his work is worrisome to me. Now... with that said, do you have a link to this article? I'd be interested in seeing how Dennis Ritchie was seen in the NYT.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
not to mention NeXT and the first real object oriented operating system That's factually incorrect. "Real" object-oriented operating systems already existed by the 70s at IBM and Xerox.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Also RMX86 from Intel

by MCRed 11y ago

dragontamer 11y ago

> Also, this is the guy who really made a dent in the universe. Dennis Ritchie died around the same time as Steve Jobs, and I always found it a shame that one is remembered significantly more than the other. Creating Unix and The C Programming language counts as making "a really big dent" in the universe. But maybe that's just me.

pekk 11y ago
More people have a stronger emotional response to iPhones, which Steve Jobs is identified as being responsible for.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  I recognize this. But Hacker News is a technology forum. I'd hope people would recognize the relevance of Dennis Ritchie to our field around here. Alas, popularity is a weird thing.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Mourning is not a lifetime achievement award. Frankly, when I hear people comparing Ritchie to Jobs, the (unkind) thought that pops into my head is: "This person feels nothing about either death, but feels strongly that people should know how much smarter they are than everyone else". Increasingly elaborate justifications, for instance about how important Ritchie is to the work people on HN do, don't help that.
    - randallsquared 11y ago
      > Mourning is not a lifetime achievement award. It certainly is one metric by which you could measure lifetime achievement. I don't really understand the apparent strength of your reaction against it, though.
    - dragontamer 11y ago
      > Increasingly elaborate justifications, for instance about how important Ritchie is to the work people on HN do, don't help that Co-Inventor of C and Unix doesn't need any explanation, and is hardly "elaborate" if you work in this field at all.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        I get it. You know who Dennis Ritchie is.
        dragontamer 11y ago
        And I would expect everyone else around here to know who he is too. I'm not exactly sure why you are being hostile to me.
acqq 11y ago
It's just you, as you know what C and Unix are. Most of the people holding their "smartphones" (of which not a single one is significantly different from iPhone, compared to the state before 2007) from this estimate: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/6-1b-smartphone-users-globally-by-2020-overtaking-basic-fixed-phone-subscriptions/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/6-1b-smartphone-users-globa... ("6.1B Smartphone Users Globally By 2020") will never even hear either of C or of Unix.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  Indeed. But where would iPhones be if it were not for the fundamental building blocks of: * File-based Operating Systems * The C Programming language (which Objective C is built on top of) * Unix (of which Mac OSX is built on top of) * Darwin (of which both Mac OSX and iOS are built on top of) Even if the masses don't understand the technical achievement, I would hope that a website named "Hacker News" would understand the scope of Dennis Ritchie's contribution to our field.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    You want to make a list of important inventions whose inventors aren't celebrated in pop culture? It'll be a long and tedious one.
    - acqq 11y ago
      Exactly. Just one example: John Bardeen. Invented the transistor -- what of today's things would work without it? The CPU in the device you use probably has a billion of them inside. Also got Nobel twice. And who knows about him?
akamaka 11y ago
Steve Jobs spent 12 years creating, funding, and leading a risky company that built a UNIX implementation that has become one of the most widely used. I think the creating OS X is in the same league as creating UNIX or Linux. Sure, Jobs wasn't a coder like Ritchie or Torvalds, but it's not like they didn't also have a lot of help.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  > I think the creating OS X is in the same league Where are the multiple Hollywood movies about Dennis Ritchie's life? It's not that Steve Jobs is seen as "equivalent" to Dennis Ritchie. It is that in popular culture, Steve Job's "worshipers" have completely blown away Dennis Ritchie's accomplishments. And even around here on Hacker News, there is a lot more press and talk about Steve Jobs's life story than Dennis Ritchie's life story.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > And even around here on Hacker News, there is a lot more press and talk about Steve Jobs's life story than Dennis Ritchie's life story. Hacker News is -- despite the name, and predictably given its sponsorship -- rather (though not entirely!) centered on VC-funded startup culture. Steve Jobs's accomplishments in monetizing technology are, in many respects, much more what that culture is focused on than Ritchie's accomplishments in developing technology.
    - akamaka 11y ago
      I know you're addressing "the culture" here in general, but seeing as I'm part of it, I really want to make clear it's not merely monetization that impresses me about Steve Jobs. He spent over a decade heavily involved in developing the NextStep platform, which has been heavily influential on all of the computing environments we use today. There would be no Windows 95, no KDE or Gnome as we know them without him. His accomplishments before 1997 were already enough to put him in a hacker hall of fame, regardless of whether that's what he's most famous for.
- 11y ago
coldtea 11y ago
I'd rather the C programming language wasn't created -- we'd have a better Algol, Pascal etc derivative in its place, and way less buffer overflows...
cafard 11y ago
I was interested to see that Dennis Ritchie got a fair-sized notice in the NY Times Sunday Magazine's end of year "The Lives They Lived Section". I don't know that it was much different size from what they gave Steve Jobs.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  https://steveffisher.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/steve-jobs-magazine-cover-tributes/ https://steveffisher.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/steve-jobs-mag... That's more or less my memory of the magazine stands. Now with that said, I do agree that Steve Jobs did a good job bringing Apple back from its ashes. But the amount of cult-like enthusiasm over his work is worrisome to me. Now... with that said, do you have a link to this article? I'd be interested in seeing how Dennis Ritchie was seen in the NYT.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

not to mention NeXT and the first real object oriented operating system That's factually incorrect. "Real" object-oriented operating systems already existed by the 70s at IBM and Xerox.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Also RMX86 from Intel