13 ms·

Discovering Dennis Ritchie’s Lost Dissertation

342 points by beefhash 6y ago

linsomniac 6y ago
When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words. Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.
- mettamage 6y ago
  When approaching strangers, saying something appreciative in a respectful way is neutral at absolute worst and quite amazing at best. Case in point: Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened. Jane McGonigal: retweeted my question while I had 0 followers and followed about 10 people. A semi-famous Dutch rapper: he was appreciative. I have many examples with non-famous people too. The rule applies to both. I originally learned it as a dating concept (a decade ago) but quickly decided to compliment anyone that I genuinely wanted to give a compliment. The reason it can still be quite amazing is simply because strangers don’t dare to compliment other people that much. I have only seen it once from another person. You can test this theory by giving a compliment to someone you think never receives it but deserves one (my go to: cleaners, especially if it’s really clean) and to someone who does receive them more often. My experience: both can still be quite awesome but the cleaners I complimented really went out of their way to be appreciative (not always, just sometimes). One even invited me to his home and I discovered he also was a music producer on the side. We made some music together as I am a hobbyist myself. I never looked at cleaners the same way again.
  - BruceEel 6y ago
    > Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened. I'd signed up to attend his 'afscheid' lecture, thinking I might try go get my copy of 'Computer Networks' signed. Did not get around to going, probably for the better ;) It's hard to overcome the 'say nothing' reflex. Years ago, g/f and I were visiting the Carl-Henning Pedersen museum in the town of Herning (DK), somehow we were the only visitors on that afternoon. We were blown away by the amazing wall decorations and his art. On the way out we ran into someone from the museum's staff and the Maestro himself (this was a few years before he passed away). What did we do? We just smiled and walked past them. I dunno.... And +1 the cleaners, for sure.
  - amelius 6y ago
    People who are bad at receiving compliments are often bad at giving them too, and vice versa.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    > Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened. I have the same reaction to people thanking me out of nowhere especially when I am deep into my own thoughts and it's awkward to say something after the shrug. The realisation comes latter. So there is a chance he did appreciate your thank you but couldn't reply back properly.
    - mettamage 6y ago
      Ah, that's also an explanation. I tend to take the most optimistic interpretation.
      - P-NP 6y ago
        > So there is a chance he did appreciate your thank you but couldn't reply back properly. > I tend to take the most optimistic interpretation. Yes, always take the most optimistic interpretation compatible with the known facts. Best way to stay happy.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    > I never looked at cleaners the same way again. Cleaners are people and are as complex, multi-faceted and interesting as anyone. No-one ignored me when I was a cleaner (I'm not a person to let them!), but I knew a girl who cleaned at a uni and she felt the students ignored her. She was a great person and they would have loved to have known her, she would have loved them back, it could have been great, but they probably didn't see her and I think she felt they were above her, and didn't try (well, smart students at a uni, she was a menial worker etc). So the gap was never bridged - and had it been bridged, simply being acknowledged and chatted to by them, and appreciated as a person, would have helped her through a truly terrible time in her life. As well as making her job much nicer in the not-awful parts of her life. People often don't see cleaners, cleaners/janitors/maintenance etc. sometimes they feel overawed or outclassed or something and scared off. Learn to see them, learn to say hello, let them know they are appreciated (as people, not as cleaners etc). It makes a huge difference to someone's work of scrubbing the floors, it really does. Like I said, it was my job once.
  - codr7 6y ago
    The thing with admiration and fame is it isn't as positive as we like to think. No one ever did anything worth mentioning for others to admire them, they did it because they had to for whatever reasons. Treating them the same as you would any other person is likely to have a more positive effect. I've had some really interesting interactions with famous people I didn't even recognize until later.
  - slim 6y ago
    I guess it's also dependent on culture. for instance in my mediterranean culture people are much more expressive and sometimes tend to be over-appreciative with strangers. which I feel is sometimes disconforting because harassing if you're a celebrity
  - trollied 6y ago
    I worked as a cleaner in a tax office. After a few months I ended up spending time helping people with their Excel skills, as someone had asked if I was studying etc & I told them Computer Science :) I have found that some people always view you as stupid when you’re doing certain jobs. When I was serving pints in a pub, people just assumed it was my career & that I was thick. I’ve found it very important to not pre-judge.
- tmh88j 6y ago
  >Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words. I'm a huge gearhead. I live in the US, but a few years ago I was in Rome for work. I was out to a late lunch with my boss and was explaining that one of my favorite boutique car manufacturers, Pagani, is just south of Napoli and that I wanted to take a weekend trip to visit their facilities. No later than 10 minutes did Mr. Horacio Pagani himself walks into the restaurant and I had full on fanboy panic attack. It was just the four of us in a restaurant; my boss and I, Horacio and his friend. I froze up and couldn't finish my meal. I tried to explain to my boss, but he didn't seem to understand. As we were leaving, Horacio got up too, which made me incredibly nervous. He looked at me and in my terrible Spanish (he was raised in Argentina, which I knew because as I mentioned I was a fanboy) I muttered "mucho gusto, soy un fan de tus autos". He smiled and nodded. I've never felt like such an idiot but so happy at the same time. Horacio Pagaini was a chief engineer at Lamborghini and basically pioneered carbon fiber manufacturing. He tried to convince Lamborghini to use carbon fiber parts, but their response was that if Ferrari wasn't using them, neither would they. Obviously that didn't last long.... He left Lamborghini and started his own company to manufacture carbon fiber parts and eventually created some of the most amazing "hypercars" that money can buy (see Pagani Huayra and Zonda). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horacio_Pagani_(auto_executive) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horacio_Pagani_(auto_executive...
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Nicest thing is to meet and interact amazing people and not know who they are, makes for a more natural exchange IMO
  - hobo_mark 6y ago
    The only Pagani factory I can find is on the opposite side of the country, near Modena, you sure there's one south of Naples?
- elygre 6y ago
  A friend of mine once found herself seated next to Paulo Coelho (famous author of e.g. The Alchemist) on a flight. She was a huge fan, but out of respect for his privacy did not initiate any conversation. Turns out he’s been flying to be part of a major talk show. The next night she watches the host ask the author about being famous. The author responds by saying that best part is that people approach him, and that he therefor gets to talk to so many different people, hear their stories and learn about their experiences. So yeah. Say “thank you”.
  - notkaiho 6y ago
    But, as your friend thought, being respectful is also important. By all means say thank you, but don't expect much response beyond an acknowledgement. Famous people get TIRED of strangers talking to them, as much as they like the random encounters.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - macintux 6y ago
      I suspect that varies. Actors, e.g., are far more likely to be recognized. I think the only author I’m a fan of who I’d recognize is Asimov, and obviously I’m unlikely to meet him on the street.
- auggierose 6y ago
  You are right :-) Shared the elevator with Dana Scott once at a conference in Seattle. Even exited it on the same floor, and we actually had hotel rooms next to each other. But I managed to say nothing to him :-D
- gbacon 6y ago
  I got to meet Larry Wall at the first Perl Conference in San Jose. I think Tom introduced us. I was dumbstruck: “Wow, I don’t know what to say; thank you.” He smiled awkwardly: “You’re welcome, I guess.” Textbook Larry. Randal and I were on the same flight out of ATL and met up for a bite in an airport restaurant. Not just for the celebrities in our profession, let the people in your everyday world know how much they mean to you, how they’ve helped you out, how they’ve made meaningful differences in your life, that you care about them, and that you love them. Life is too short not to.
- frost_knight 6y ago
  Back in 2007 I was the chair of the Washington, DC chapter of the ACM. The chapter had been dormant for a while so I thought hosting a lecture by a big name in computing would be a good kickstart. I emailed Brian Kernighan asking if he'd be available and willing to give a talk on Unix. He said he'd be absolutely delighted. He was a wonderful speaker and just a great guy to talk to. He patiently signed copies of K&R C that folks had brought, told interesting anecdotes, and was a kind and pleasant person to everyone who spoke with him. Very approachable. One thing I remember is him telling me that he only gets stage nerves if he knows he's being filmed. Massive crowd? No problem. Photographs? Go for it. Video cameras? If you do, you have my permission but don't tell me, and make sure I don't notice them. After that I kept reaching out to other Big Names, and many of them said yes. I figured there was no harm in asking, all they could do is say no. And not a single person I asked said no because they didn't want to, it was always because the scheduling or travel just wouldn't line up properly.
zgs 6y ago
As somebody who was in a similar situation, I paid for the printing and binding of my PhD thesis. I earned the degree. DMR didn't. It's as simple as that. "I was there but for", "I earned it except for", "Everything but" are all excuses. I've no sympathy for him not earning his PhD if he couldn't follow through and meet the requirements.
- platinumrad 6y ago
  Doesn't sound like he was asking for anyone's sympathy.
W0lf 6y ago
So after reading this, is it correct to say that Ritchie basically showed in his thesis the application of the for loop for recursive prime number computation and also its application to computational complexity? AFAIK for loops where already known at the time since they first appeared in ALGOL a little earlier?
- sradman 6y ago
  TLDR; Gödel’s incompleteness theorem rests on recursive functions which can be expressed as looping programs, i.e., for() loops. Dennis Ritchie’s PHD thesis, which was never accepted by Harvard because he refused to pay for a bound copy required for submission, demonstrated that the complexity of looping programs is determined by the degree of nesting. Ritchie did not seem to be driven by status seeking but instead by the urge to build things.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    ...and perhaps a hint of disdain for the 11th hour fee.
dang 6y ago
> My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural languages better than functional ones. I wonder if that last bit was as unfashionable a statement when he made it as it would be now.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The pro argument: many of the people I've exchanged email with[1] from that period have indicated that functional had more geek cred even then. The con argument: we have enough memory and cpu now that functional languages are more practical than they ever were, which may help them be more prêt-à-porter fashion than the haute couture of a geekish peacock tail or springbok leap. [1] I'm usually asking questions about long-dead endian-style controversies (cue the compromise of arrays starting at 0,5), and it's been nice to hear many of the people involved recommending the work of their opposites. Folk history seems to ascribe more dogmatic attitudes to the people who lived through technical controversies than they actually have. Another lesson learned: when I try to tease out chains of influences, a not uncommon response is "I wish I'd been that clever, really it was just hacked together."
  - mayankkaizen 6y ago
    Your second para has contributed few things to my English language knowledge.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      Sorry, I'll reword: Thanks to Moore's Law, functional programming is no longer just for the mainframe, but can now be used for normal programs on standard platforms. If more people choose functional now just because they like the style[1], then it could be that procedural would be becoming less fashionable[2] over time. [1] instead of before, when "wearing the hair shirt" of functional programming could be seen as declaring oneself a strong enough hacker that one could hack despite all the practical drawbacks. (compare "Honest Costly Signal" in the context of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570975 ) [2] in the mass fashion vs class fashion sense. (compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23560291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23560291 . I doubt it's controversial to say functional has always been on the Joycean side.)
Taniwha 6y ago
So what would happen if we took up a collection, produced a bound copy, and sent it off to Harvard?
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Might be difficult. I couldn't turn up any policy in brief surfing, but the only posthumous degrees I found were non-doctoral, and https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mary-whiton-calkins https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mary-whiton-calkin... doesn't bode well. (I'm probably just cynical, but if we took up a large enough collection, I'd bet they'd be willing to grant a degree in lieu of naming a building.)
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    There's nothing preventing award of degrees after death, if the thesis has been defended, other than administrivia. It's not the Nobel prize.
- verytrivial 6y ago
  Policy or not, it would perhaps be nice to deposit a copy anyway. Put the ball in their court so to speak, even if Harvard does nothing further.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- gwern 6y ago
  I like this idea. So I took a look at their policies and it seems the official Harvard thesis printer (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/student-handbook/dissertation-guidelines/#boundfee https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/student-handbook/dissertation-g...) is Acme, which has an individual-oriented website: https://www.thesisondemand.com/ https://www.thesisondemand.com/ Using their calculator, a single 181pg\* BW printed thesis is ~$45. That seems cheap enough for a joke for me! But it looks like one will need to add some additional metadata to follow the dissertation guidelines... If anyone wants to discuss this further, email me. \* The first copy of the thesis linked in OP is 179 pages but it's very dirty and would need to be printed in color; the second copy, https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2020/05/102790971/Ritchie_dissertation.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... , is in much better shape and can be printed in BW.
morelisp 6y ago
I didn't read the thesis itself yet but I feel like some key point must be missing from the article. The "loop programs" described are nearly identical to the "abacus machine" presented in the textbook Computability and Logic (pp. 55-56 3rd ed.) which cites Joachim Lambek who published "How to Program an Infinite Abacus" in 1961 which seems to also be trivially close in structure (not merely equivalent). Lambek in turn cites Melzak's "An Informal Arithmetical Approach to Computability and Computation" which not identical - it has transfer and arbitrary compare branch instructions - but that seems a compromise for pedagogical purposes as deriving both from the "abacus" seems fairly trivial to me.
- vilhelm_s 6y ago
  "How to Program an Infinite Abacus" defines register machines (a.k.a counter machines), and shows that they coincide with general recursive functions. "The complexity of loop programs" defines loop programs, and shows that the coincide with primitive recursive functions. (A key difference is whether loops are bounded or not.)
atrettel 6y ago
I am not surprised about the effort it took to find a copy of Ritchie's dissertation. Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest. But the museum used the best method in this case: talk to people close to people who had a copy at one point. In my experience when all else fails, this strategy is the primary one that ends up working. It doesn't work all the time, and I still am looking for a few "ancient" technical reports despite some sustained effort on my part, but I have been able to find several documents/reports just by asking the right people. Does anybody else have similar experiences? I'm interested if there are other avenues that somebody could try as well.
- mercer 6y ago
  Out of curiosity: what 'ancient' technical reports are you looking for (plus who knows someone here might know something)?
  - atrettel 6y ago
    The only ancient technical report that I am looking for currently is Mark Morkovin's 1960 AGARD conference paper titled "The structure of supersonic turbulent boundary layers". This was presented at the April 1960 Boundary Layer Research Meeting of the NATO AGARD Wind Tunnel and Model Testing Panel in London. I have tried contacting many different people about this without any success. Morkovin died in 2015 around the time I learned about the paper. His family has never responded to my correspondence and I do not believe they have a copy. The one professor who did have a copy of it threw out his collection of papers a few years before I asked him. Morkovin was a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and they do not have it in their archives. Morkovin likely wrote the paper while working for the Martin Company (now merged into Lockheed Martin). It is likely that the paper was also filed as a Martin Company research report, but I later learned that Lockheed Martin has no copies of the Martin Company research report series since the Martin Company apparently destroyed the paper copies intentionally before the merger (I have no detail past that). NATO published other papers from this conference but not this one. They may have a copy but they have never replied to my correspondence. I do know of a professor looking for a copy of this paper, but he has also not found it either. It would be nice to find a copy, but it's not a high priority for me.
prdonahue 6y ago
Random Dennis Ritchie story: my high school principal was Dennis' brother, John, and had a "UNIX Magic" poster (https://i.imgur.com/aqg21UI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/aqg21UI.jpg) hanging in his office. I asked him what that was about and he dismissed it with a wave of his hand, as if annoyed: "oh, just something my brother did".
- faizshah 6y ago
  Someone posted a high res scan of this on reddit if anyone else is interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/91ntoh/comment/e30bc3p https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/91ntoh/comment/e3... Unfortunately no scan of the other two (feuds and views). Here someone find a more permanent place for it: https://send.firefox.com/download/c1783a94da0e8cfa/#sklTlfgcnkpYqF7eX1jsag https://send.firefox.com/download/c1783a94da0e8cfa/#sklTlfgc...
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    It says it's in the owner's trash now for some reason!? I want this so bad.
  - wazoox 6y ago
    Alas, "File is in owner's trash".
  - sedatk 6y ago
    High res version is inaccessible there.
  - lioeters 6y ago
    Seeing how the image link has expired, here's a decent one: https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg
  - sritchie 6y ago
    I have a copy of Views! Away from home for a few days but I can post pics of the three posters when I make it home.
angry_octet 6y ago
How absolutely incredible that Harvard failed to obtain free publicity by finally awarding Ritchie his PhD.
karmakaze 6y ago
"he shows that assessing loop programs by their depth of loops is exactly equivalent to Grzegorczyk’s hierarchy. The rate of growth of primitive recursive functions is indeed related to their computational complexity, in fact, they are identical." "I would have loved to collaborate with him, because he seemed like a smart, nice guy who’d be fun to work with, but yeah, you know, he was already doing other things. He was staying up all night playing Spacewar!”
globular-toast 6y ago
> He already had a coveted job as a researcher at Bell Labs, and “never really loved taking care of the details of living.” I love reading things like this. It reminds me that I'm not alone (although, yes, I realise Ritchie is dead). I find it very hard to participate in these kind of trivialities even though many other people seem to value them so much that it mean the difference between a PhD and no PhD. But I'll often kick myself later for not bothering. I wonder if Ritchie did.

342 points by beefhash 6y ago

When I was a teen, K&R The C Programming Language changed my life. Years later I shared an elevator with him at Usenix. I always regretted not saying something to him, but I didn't have the words. Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words.

mettamage 6y ago
When approaching strangers, saying something appreciative in a respectful way is neutral at absolute worst and quite amazing at best. Case in point: Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened. Jane McGonigal: retweeted my question while I had 0 followers and followed about 10 people. A semi-famous Dutch rapper: he was appreciative. I have many examples with non-famous people too. The rule applies to both. I originally learned it as a dating concept (a decade ago) but quickly decided to compliment anyone that I genuinely wanted to give a compliment. The reason it can still be quite amazing is simply because strangers don’t dare to compliment other people that much. I have only seen it once from another person. You can test this theory by giving a compliment to someone you think never receives it but deserves one (my go to: cleaners, especially if it’s really clean) and to someone who does receive them more often. My experience: both can still be quite awesome but the cleaners I complimented really went out of their way to be appreciative (not always, just sometimes). One even invited me to his home and I discovered he also was a music producer on the side. We made some music together as I am a hobbyist myself. I never looked at cleaners the same way again.
- BruceEel 6y ago
  > Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened. I'd signed up to attend his 'afscheid' lecture, thinking I might try go get my copy of 'Computer Networks' signed. Did not get around to going, probably for the better ;) It's hard to overcome the 'say nothing' reflex. Years ago, g/f and I were visiting the Carl-Henning Pedersen museum in the town of Herning (DK), somehow we were the only visitors on that afternoon. We were blown away by the amazing wall decorations and his art. On the way out we ran into someone from the museum's staff and the Maestro himself (this was a few years before he passed away). What did we do? We just smiled and walked past them. I dunno.... And +1 the cleaners, for sure.
- amelius 6y ago
  People who are bad at receiving compliments are often bad at giving them too, and vice versa.
- searchableguy 6y ago
  > Andrew Tanenbaum: I said that his work was amazing and thanked him. He shrugged me off. I think he felt busy or didn’t care. I was happy that he listened. I have the same reaction to people thanking me out of nowhere especially when I am deep into my own thoughts and it's awkward to say something after the shrug. The realisation comes latter. So there is a chance he did appreciate your thank you but couldn't reply back properly.
  - mettamage 6y ago
    Ah, that's also an explanation. I tend to take the most optimistic interpretation.
    - P-NP 6y ago
      > So there is a chance he did appreciate your thank you but couldn't reply back properly. > I tend to take the most optimistic interpretation. Yes, always take the most optimistic interpretation compatible with the known facts. Best way to stay happy.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  > I never looked at cleaners the same way again. Cleaners are people and are as complex, multi-faceted and interesting as anyone. No-one ignored me when I was a cleaner (I'm not a person to let them!), but I knew a girl who cleaned at a uni and she felt the students ignored her. She was a great person and they would have loved to have known her, she would have loved them back, it could have been great, but they probably didn't see her and I think she felt they were above her, and didn't try (well, smart students at a uni, she was a menial worker etc). So the gap was never bridged - and had it been bridged, simply being acknowledged and chatted to by them, and appreciated as a person, would have helped her through a truly terrible time in her life. As well as making her job much nicer in the not-awful parts of her life. People often don't see cleaners, cleaners/janitors/maintenance etc. sometimes they feel overawed or outclassed or something and scared off. Learn to see them, learn to say hello, let them know they are appreciated (as people, not as cleaners etc). It makes a huge difference to someone's work of scrubbing the floors, it really does. Like I said, it was my job once.
- codr7 6y ago
  The thing with admiration and fame is it isn't as positive as we like to think. No one ever did anything worth mentioning for others to admire them, they did it because they had to for whatever reasons. Treating them the same as you would any other person is likely to have a more positive effect. I've had some really interesting interactions with famous people I didn't even recognize until later.
- slim 6y ago
  I guess it's also dependent on culture. for instance in my mediterranean culture people are much more expressive and sometimes tend to be over-appreciative with strangers. which I feel is sometimes disconforting because harassing if you're a celebrity
- trollied 6y ago
  I worked as a cleaner in a tax office. After a few months I ended up spending time helping people with their Excel skills, as someone had asked if I was studying etc & I told them Computer Science :) I have found that some people always view you as stupid when you’re doing certain jobs. When I was serving pints in a pub, people just assumed it was my career & that I was thick. I’ve found it very important to not pre-judge.
tmh88j 6y ago
>Kids: If you meet your heroes, say something. "Thank you" is good if you don't have the words. I'm a huge gearhead. I live in the US, but a few years ago I was in Rome for work. I was out to a late lunch with my boss and was explaining that one of my favorite boutique car manufacturers, Pagani, is just south of Napoli and that I wanted to take a weekend trip to visit their facilities. No later than 10 minutes did Mr. Horacio Pagani himself walks into the restaurant and I had full on fanboy panic attack. It was just the four of us in a restaurant; my boss and I, Horacio and his friend. I froze up and couldn't finish my meal. I tried to explain to my boss, but he didn't seem to understand. As we were leaving, Horacio got up too, which made me incredibly nervous. He looked at me and in my terrible Spanish (he was raised in Argentina, which I knew because as I mentioned I was a fanboy) I muttered "mucho gusto, soy un fan de tus autos". He smiled and nodded. I've never felt like such an idiot but so happy at the same time. Horacio Pagaini was a chief engineer at Lamborghini and basically pioneered carbon fiber manufacturing. He tried to convince Lamborghini to use carbon fiber parts, but their response was that if Ferrari wasn't using them, neither would they. Obviously that didn't last long.... He left Lamborghini and started his own company to manufacture carbon fiber parts and eventually created some of the most amazing "hypercars" that money can buy (see Pagani Huayra and Zonda). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horacio_Pagani_(auto_executive) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horacio_Pagani_(auto_executive...
- tartoran 6y ago
  Nicest thing is to meet and interact amazing people and not know who they are, makes for a more natural exchange IMO
- hobo_mark 6y ago
  The only Pagani factory I can find is on the opposite side of the country, near Modena, you sure there's one south of Naples?
elygre 6y ago
A friend of mine once found herself seated next to Paulo Coelho (famous author of e.g. The Alchemist) on a flight. She was a huge fan, but out of respect for his privacy did not initiate any conversation. Turns out he’s been flying to be part of a major talk show. The next night she watches the host ask the author about being famous. The author responds by saying that best part is that people approach him, and that he therefor gets to talk to so many different people, hear their stories and learn about their experiences. So yeah. Say “thank you”.
- notkaiho 6y ago
  But, as your friend thought, being respectful is also important. By all means say thank you, but don't expect much response beyond an acknowledgement. Famous people get TIRED of strangers talking to them, as much as they like the random encounters.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - macintux 6y ago
    I suspect that varies. Actors, e.g., are far more likely to be recognized. I think the only author I’m a fan of who I’d recognize is Asimov, and obviously I’m unlikely to meet him on the street.
auggierose 6y ago
You are right :-) Shared the elevator with Dana Scott once at a conference in Seattle. Even exited it on the same floor, and we actually had hotel rooms next to each other. But I managed to say nothing to him :-D
gbacon 6y ago
I got to meet Larry Wall at the first Perl Conference in San Jose. I think Tom introduced us. I was dumbstruck: “Wow, I don’t know what to say; thank you.” He smiled awkwardly: “You’re welcome, I guess.” Textbook Larry. Randal and I were on the same flight out of ATL and met up for a bite in an airport restaurant. Not just for the celebrities in our profession, let the people in your everyday world know how much they mean to you, how they’ve helped you out, how they’ve made meaningful differences in your life, that you care about them, and that you love them. Life is too short not to.
frost_knight 6y ago
Back in 2007 I was the chair of the Washington, DC chapter of the ACM. The chapter had been dormant for a while so I thought hosting a lecture by a big name in computing would be a good kickstart. I emailed Brian Kernighan asking if he'd be available and willing to give a talk on Unix. He said he'd be absolutely delighted. He was a wonderful speaker and just a great guy to talk to. He patiently signed copies of K&R C that folks had brought, told interesting anecdotes, and was a kind and pleasant person to everyone who spoke with him. Very approachable. One thing I remember is him telling me that he only gets stage nerves if he knows he's being filmed. Massive crowd? No problem. Photographs? Go for it. Video cameras? If you do, you have my permission but don't tell me, and make sure I don't notice them. After that I kept reaching out to other Big Names, and many of them said yes. I figured there was no harm in asking, all they could do is say no. And not a single person I asked said no because they didn't want to, it was always because the scheduling or travel just wouldn't line up properly.

zgs 6y ago

As somebody who was in a similar situation, I paid for the printing and binding of my PhD thesis. I earned the degree. DMR didn't. It's as simple as that. "I was there but for", "I earned it except for", "Everything but" are all excuses. I've no sympathy for him not earning his PhD if he couldn't follow through and meet the requirements.

platinumrad 6y ago
Doesn't sound like he was asking for anyone's sympathy.

W0lf 6y ago

So after reading this, is it correct to say that Ritchie basically showed in his thesis the application of the for loop for recursive prime number computation and also its application to computational complexity? AFAIK for loops where already known at the time since they first appeared in ALGOL a little earlier?

sradman 6y ago
TLDR; Gödel’s incompleteness theorem rests on recursive functions which can be expressed as looping programs, i.e., for() loops. Dennis Ritchie’s PHD thesis, which was never accepted by Harvard because he refused to pay for a bound copy required for submission, demonstrated that the complexity of looping programs is determined by the degree of nesting. Ritchie did not seem to be driven by status seeking but instead by the urge to build things.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  ...and perhaps a hint of disdain for the 11th hour fee.

dang 6y ago

> My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural languages better than functional ones. I wonder if that last bit was as unfashionable a statement when he made it as it would be now.

082349872349872 6y ago
The pro argument: many of the people I've exchanged email with[1] from that period have indicated that functional had more geek cred even then. The con argument: we have enough memory and cpu now that functional languages are more practical than they ever were, which may help them be more prêt-à-porter fashion than the haute couture of a geekish peacock tail or springbok leap. [1] I'm usually asking questions about long-dead endian-style controversies (cue the compromise of arrays starting at 0,5), and it's been nice to hear many of the people involved recommending the work of their opposites. Folk history seems to ascribe more dogmatic attitudes to the people who lived through technical controversies than they actually have. Another lesson learned: when I try to tease out chains of influences, a not uncommon response is "I wish I'd been that clever, really it was just hacked together."
- mayankkaizen 6y ago
  Your second para has contributed few things to my English language knowledge.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Sorry, I'll reword: Thanks to Moore's Law, functional programming is no longer just for the mainframe, but can now be used for normal programs on standard platforms. If more people choose functional now just because they like the style[1], then it could be that procedural would be becoming less fashionable[2] over time. [1] instead of before, when "wearing the hair shirt" of functional programming could be seen as declaring oneself a strong enough hacker that one could hack despite all the practical drawbacks. (compare "Honest Costly Signal" in the context of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23570975 ) [2] in the mass fashion vs class fashion sense. (compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23560291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23560291 . I doubt it's controversial to say functional has always been on the Joycean side.)

Taniwha 6y ago

So what would happen if we took up a collection, produced a bound copy, and sent it off to Harvard?

082349872349872 6y ago
Might be difficult. I couldn't turn up any policy in brief surfing, but the only posthumous degrees I found were non-doctoral, and https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mary-whiton-calkins https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mary-whiton-calkin... doesn't bode well. (I'm probably just cynical, but if we took up a large enough collection, I'd bet they'd be willing to grant a degree in lieu of naming a building.)
- angry_octet 6y ago
  There's nothing preventing award of degrees after death, if the thesis has been defended, other than administrivia. It's not the Nobel prize.
verytrivial 6y ago
Policy or not, it would perhaps be nice to deposit a copy anyway. Put the ball in their court so to speak, even if Harvard does nothing further.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
gwern 6y ago
I like this idea. So I took a look at their policies and it seems the official Harvard thesis printer (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/student-handbook/dissertation-guidelines/#boundfee https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/student-handbook/dissertation-g...) is Acme, which has an individual-oriented website: https://www.thesisondemand.com/ https://www.thesisondemand.com/ Using their calculator, a single 181pg\* BW printed thesis is ~$45. That seems cheap enough for a joke for me! But it looks like one will need to add some additional metadata to follow the dissertation guidelines... If anyone wants to discuss this further, email me. \* The first copy of the thesis linked in OP is 179 pages but it's very dirty and would need to be printed in color; the second copy, https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2020/05/102790971/Ritchie_dissertation.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... , is in much better shape and can be printed in BW.

morelisp 6y ago

I didn't read the thesis itself yet but I feel like some key point must be missing from the article. The "loop programs" described are nearly identical to the "abacus machine" presented in the textbook Computability and Logic (pp. 55-56 3rd ed.) which cites Joachim Lambek who published "How to Program an Infinite Abacus" in 1961 which seems to also be trivially close in structure (not merely equivalent). Lambek in turn cites Melzak's "An Informal Arithmetical Approach to Computability and Computation" which not identical - it has transfer and arbitrary compare branch instructions - but that seems a compromise for pedagogical purposes as deriving both from the "abacus" seems fairly trivial to me.

vilhelm_s 6y ago
"How to Program an Infinite Abacus" defines register machines (a.k.a counter machines), and shows that they coincide with general recursive functions. "The complexity of loop programs" defines loop programs, and shows that the coincide with primitive recursive functions. (A key difference is whether loops are bounded or not.)

atrettel 6y ago

I am not surprised about the effort it took to find a copy of Ritchie's dissertation. Dissertations tend to be difficult to find if they are not already listed on WorldCat or in ProQuest. But the museum used the best method in this case: talk to people close to people who had a copy at one point. In my experience when all else fails, this strategy is the primary one that ends up working. It doesn't work all the time, and I still am looking for a few "ancient" technical reports despite some sustained effort on my part, but I have been able to find several documents/reports just by asking the right people. Does anybody else have similar experiences? I'm interested if there are other avenues that somebody could try as well.

mercer 6y ago
Out of curiosity: what 'ancient' technical reports are you looking for (plus who knows someone here might know something)?
- atrettel 6y ago
  The only ancient technical report that I am looking for currently is Mark Morkovin's 1960 AGARD conference paper titled "The structure of supersonic turbulent boundary layers". This was presented at the April 1960 Boundary Layer Research Meeting of the NATO AGARD Wind Tunnel and Model Testing Panel in London. I have tried contacting many different people about this without any success. Morkovin died in 2015 around the time I learned about the paper. His family has never responded to my correspondence and I do not believe they have a copy. The one professor who did have a copy of it threw out his collection of papers a few years before I asked him. Morkovin was a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and they do not have it in their archives. Morkovin likely wrote the paper while working for the Martin Company (now merged into Lockheed Martin). It is likely that the paper was also filed as a Martin Company research report, but I later learned that Lockheed Martin has no copies of the Martin Company research report series since the Martin Company apparently destroyed the paper copies intentionally before the merger (I have no detail past that). NATO published other papers from this conference but not this one. They may have a copy but they have never replied to my correspondence. I do know of a professor looking for a copy of this paper, but he has also not found it either. It would be nice to find a copy, but it's not a high priority for me.

prdonahue 6y ago

Random Dennis Ritchie story: my high school principal was Dennis' brother, John, and had a "UNIX Magic" poster (https://i.imgur.com/aqg21UI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/aqg21UI.jpg) hanging in his office. I asked him what that was about and he dismissed it with a wave of his hand, as if annoyed: "oh, just something my brother did".

faizshah 6y ago
Someone posted a high res scan of this on reddit if anyone else is interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/91ntoh/comment/e30bc3p https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/91ntoh/comment/e3... Unfortunately no scan of the other two (feuds and views). Here someone find a more permanent place for it: https://send.firefox.com/download/c1783a94da0e8cfa/#sklTlfgcnkpYqF7eX1jsag https://send.firefox.com/download/c1783a94da0e8cfa/#sklTlfgc...
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  It says it's in the owner's trash now for some reason!? I want this so bad.
- wazoox 6y ago
  Alas, "File is in owner's trash".
- sedatk 6y ago
  High res version is inaccessible there.
- lioeters 6y ago
  Seeing how the image link has expired, here's a decent one: https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg
- sritchie 6y ago
  I have a copy of Views! Away from home for a few days but I can post pics of the three posters when I make it home.

angry_octet 6y ago

How absolutely incredible that Harvard failed to obtain free publicity by finally awarding Ritchie his PhD.

karmakaze 6y ago

"he shows that assessing loop programs by their depth of loops is exactly equivalent to Grzegorczyk’s hierarchy. The rate of growth of primitive recursive functions is indeed related to their computational complexity, in fact, they are identical." "I would have loved to collaborate with him, because he seemed like a smart, nice guy who’d be fun to work with, but yeah, you know, he was already doing other things. He was staying up all night playing Spacewar!”

globular-toast 6y ago

> He already had a coveted job as a researcher at Bell Labs, and “never really loved taking care of the details of living.” I love reading things like this. It reminds me that I'm not alone (although, yes, I realise Ritchie is dead). I find it very hard to participate in these kind of trivialities even though many other people seem to value them so much that it mean the difference between a PhD and no PhD. But I'll often kick myself later for not bothering. I wonder if Ritchie did.