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I feel very uncomfortable with the constant comparison between Ritchie's death and Jobs' death. Even Rob Pike ended up doing this. [1] Why are we trying to crea

I feel very uncomfortable with the constant comparison between Ritchie's death and Jobs' death. Even Rob Pike ended up doing this. [1] Why are we trying to create conflict and see injustice where there is none? The amount of media coverage a person gets has no correlation with his importance. Can we blame people for not knowing him? Don't give me the tired "everybody is using his software, so everybody should know about him" argument. It's so hypocritical. We use a lot of things whose inventors we don't know. [1] https://plus.google.com/101960720994009339267/posts/33mmANQZDtY https://plus.google.com/101960720994009339267/posts/33mmANQZ...

schleyfox 15y ago
Agreed. Can't we just say this has been a hard month for the tech community?
prayag 15y ago
Not to mention that Steve Jobs was so much younger than Ritchie. It's always sad when a great innovator dies but its doubly sad when he dies young. Steve's kids are much younger than Daniel's and are unfortunate to have lost their father at such a young age. Same goes for his wife.
- cjfont 15y ago
  It's not just that he was younger, he arguably also died at the peak of his innovative career.
  - piccadilly 15y ago
    Making fat piles of cash on status-symbol widgets. I guess it's too bad that I won't see what other slightly-rounded, double-priced white objects he would have produced. How can you even compare that to developing the C language?
    - crikli 15y ago
      My "status-symbol widget" is going to allow me to make a cross country flight tomorrow without carrying three sectional charts, a terminal area chart, and an airport/FBO directory. It will retain a GPS fix the entire flight, creating a moving map out of a VFR sectional chart and serving as an unofficial backup to the panel-mounted GPS. Once I land I'll use the same "status-symbol widget" to check my email and respond to any particularly urgent requests; I'll use the same device to call my wife and tell her I'm on the ground safely. Might even take a picture to send to her if I feel like it. Then I'll get in my rental car, where I'll use my "status-symbol widget" to help me get to my ultimate destination, a hotel room I booked using the same device that's going to help me get there. Once there, I'll fire up the device to find someplace good to eat.
      - piccadilly 15y ago
        So you have phone GPS (like many phones) and you can read your email (like many phones) and you can make calls (like most phones) and you can use it to browse web pages. There have been small electronic devices doing combinations of these things for a long time, none of this is in any way exclusive or original to the iPhone. This all rests on decades of preceding technology not proprietary to Apple. Steve Jobs didn't make it new, he just made it white. It's always very sad when a human being dies. But excuse me if I don't worship the corporate hero who produced the object you use to do things which aren't necessary using non-unique technology. I'll grant that one thing Steve Jobs did develop was the brand strategy that makes you rabid when someone challenges your decision of buying small electronic devices you don't need at a significant markup, because it's become a part of your personal identity.
        sritchie 15y ago
        I think the "like many phones" point is key. The iPhone pulled everything in this direction.
        diminish 15y ago
        Agree with piccadily, my main critic of Steve Jobs is that he is the inventor of the iFanboyism and misused the teenage envies to create status symbol gadgets which tech-wannabes use to show off here and there. They continuously ignored the deficiencies of what they held in their hands previous lack of true multitasking, a notification system which sucked, a walled garden which excluded threatening businesses, a simple button interface which didnt have widgets etc). However those iFanboys polluted all true tech discussions, by bringing such constructs to tech discussions like 'I love my ' , 'I browse the internet with my ...', 'Non-iphone users stink, or are poor etc', to further enlarge the status-widget. On the contrary, Dennis Ritchie and other great tech people talked to our minds, for example, to give us a philosophy of how to create small programs to combine in a Lego fashion to create bigger ones (Unix philosophy), or to better program the machine underneath with a versatile language such as C. They are far more profound. Second sad fact is that Steve Jobs gave minimal back to open source community (for example, BSD..), and defended a world where the company milks the users to the full limit.
accoinstereo 15y ago
This. It's completely nonsensical to chastise the public for mourning someone disproportionately. Had Dennis passed a year from now, would this article have been written? This reasoning slips into the unproductive paradigms that elitists subscribe to to feel better about themselves. Are Ritchie's and Job's legacies inseparable? Yes. Does that mean their work is to be valued by precedence? No more than the likes of Tesla and Edison. I appreciate the insight to Ritchie's immortal legacy. But basing legacies on such logic quickly deteriorates into gibberish.
abhimishra 15y ago
Despite the pissing wars, I don't think it's that anyone is looking to 'create conflict', since I'm betting most people who respected Ritchie also respected Jobs. Rather, I'm guessing it's that everyone who is making statements similar to Pike's sees a 'hardcore scientist guy' ignored next to a 'well-marketed guy', and they are very uncomfortable with that (despite the fact that both of them were more than the stereotypes I'm calling out here). As for the argument you are calling 'tired', I respectfully disagree. Certainly we use a lot of things whose inventors we don't know - but Ritchie's work was remarkable in that it was fundamentally deeply technical (in a way that is appreciable to hardcore CS folks), extremely wide in scope (in a way that affects people from every walk of life), and recent-enough to warrant more attention from today's society. As for media - is it really OK for media (and by extension, society) to ignore a person with that kind of impact? I personally feel it shouldn't be culturally acceptable because that breeds a society where hard-science and scientists are not in the public consciousness (ahead of, for example, many random celebrities). Ultimately, the effect of that is more systemic IMHO (few scientists in politics, lots of politicians who can freely ignore science, reduced funding for fundamental scientific research, and so forth).
- _delirium 15y ago
  sees a 'hardcore scientist guy' ignored next to a 'well-marketed guy', and they are very uncomfortable with that (despite the fact that both of them were more than the stereotypes I'm calling out here) I guess I can see that, but to me it's not surprising; people die all the time, and attention to their death is mostly, I'd say, driven by how famous among the general public they were previously, which tends to favor politicians, athletes, popular musicians, businessmen, etc. The only thing that even makes it particularly noticeable here is the juxtaposition, since they were both in tech and died within a short distance. If it were Dennis Ritchie versus a big pop star, nobody would bother to raise an eyebrow at how much more front-page coverage the pop star got.
- philwelch 15y ago
  If it makes anyone feel any better, I don't think Steve Jobs was all that interested in his personal celebrity. He was intensely private and only ever made public appearances to promote Apple and its products, and he only did that because he was the best at it. It's the rest of society that made him into a folk hero for what he did, and the fact is our society undervalues technical people like Dennis Ritchie. As far as important people whose deaths went largely unheralded, the death of Norman Borlaug a couple of years ago is another great example.
Radix 15y ago
You're right and I winced when the Jobs comparison was made early in the article. I'm not sure that making comparisons to Jobs isn't the right thing to do even if it wasn't done well here. Jobs and Richie are both heroes to computing culture but after Jobs death we're left feeling that Richie deserves similar praise in the popular press, but unable to easily explain to the public that Dennis impact on the world was on the same level as Jobs'. Wired is a popular magazine now and needs a way to communicate Richie's impact to it's readers, so they use Jobs as a comparison.
rooshdi 15y ago
True, plus both contributed to technology in their own ways and I highly doubt either man cared much about their popularity status. Why can't we just pay homage to their individuality?
partition 15y ago
It's not a judgement about the relative contributions of Steve Jobs versus that of Dennis Ritches. It's a judgement about the shortsighted, irrational, overly individualistic mentality that attempts to attribute the ONE PERSON to any contribution, no matter how large. The fact is, that both Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs relied on entire _communities_ to accomplish what they supposedly "did on their own," which is the unsaid IDIOTIC hyperbole that is routinely thrown around HN, starting with "I did this project in a weekend posts" (which if they were honest, they would say "WE, me and the other people who built the fucking libraries, languages and other tools, did this project in a weekend). The problem is not Dennis Ritchie and it is not Steve Jobs. Both were people who were doing the best they could in the situation that they were in. It is YOU PEOPLE who are the problem. Your fundamentally dishonest premise that credit can be attributed to any one person in any project that involves more than masturbation (even that is a collaboration between the person and the providers of food that enabled him or her to get past puberty). Frankly, I'm sick of all this bullshit.

schleyfox 15y ago

Agreed. Can't we just say this has been a hard month for the tech community?

prayag 15y ago

Not to mention that Steve Jobs was so much younger than Ritchie. It's always sad when a great innovator dies but its doubly sad when he dies young. Steve's kids are much younger than Daniel's and are unfortunate to have lost their father at such a young age. Same goes for his wife.

cjfont 15y ago
It's not just that he was younger, he arguably also died at the peak of his innovative career.
- piccadilly 15y ago
  Making fat piles of cash on status-symbol widgets. I guess it's too bad that I won't see what other slightly-rounded, double-priced white objects he would have produced. How can you even compare that to developing the C language?
  - crikli 15y ago
    My "status-symbol widget" is going to allow me to make a cross country flight tomorrow without carrying three sectional charts, a terminal area chart, and an airport/FBO directory. It will retain a GPS fix the entire flight, creating a moving map out of a VFR sectional chart and serving as an unofficial backup to the panel-mounted GPS. Once I land I'll use the same "status-symbol widget" to check my email and respond to any particularly urgent requests; I'll use the same device to call my wife and tell her I'm on the ground safely. Might even take a picture to send to her if I feel like it. Then I'll get in my rental car, where I'll use my "status-symbol widget" to help me get to my ultimate destination, a hotel room I booked using the same device that's going to help me get there. Once there, I'll fire up the device to find someplace good to eat.
    - piccadilly 15y ago
      So you have phone GPS (like many phones) and you can read your email (like many phones) and you can make calls (like most phones) and you can use it to browse web pages. There have been small electronic devices doing combinations of these things for a long time, none of this is in any way exclusive or original to the iPhone. This all rests on decades of preceding technology not proprietary to Apple. Steve Jobs didn't make it new, he just made it white. It's always very sad when a human being dies. But excuse me if I don't worship the corporate hero who produced the object you use to do things which aren't necessary using non-unique technology. I'll grant that one thing Steve Jobs did develop was the brand strategy that makes you rabid when someone challenges your decision of buying small electronic devices you don't need at a significant markup, because it's become a part of your personal identity.
      - sritchie 15y ago
        I think the "like many phones" point is key. The iPhone pulled everything in this direction.
      - diminish 15y ago
        Agree with piccadily, my main critic of Steve Jobs is that he is the inventor of the iFanboyism and misused the teenage envies to create status symbol gadgets which tech-wannabes use to show off here and there. They continuously ignored the deficiencies of what they held in their hands previous lack of true multitasking, a notification system which sucked, a walled garden which excluded threatening businesses, a simple button interface which didnt have widgets etc). However those iFanboys polluted all true tech discussions, by bringing such constructs to tech discussions like 'I love my ' , 'I browse the internet with my ...', 'Non-iphone users stink, or are poor etc', to further enlarge the status-widget. On the contrary, Dennis Ritchie and other great tech people talked to our minds, for example, to give us a philosophy of how to create small programs to combine in a Lego fashion to create bigger ones (Unix philosophy), or to better program the machine underneath with a versatile language such as C. They are far more profound. Second sad fact is that Steve Jobs gave minimal back to open source community (for example, BSD..), and defended a world where the company milks the users to the full limit.

accoinstereo 15y ago

This. It's completely nonsensical to chastise the public for mourning someone disproportionately. Had Dennis passed a year from now, would this article have been written? This reasoning slips into the unproductive paradigms that elitists subscribe to to feel better about themselves. Are Ritchie's and Job's legacies inseparable? Yes. Does that mean their work is to be valued by precedence? No more than the likes of Tesla and Edison. I appreciate the insight to Ritchie's immortal legacy. But basing legacies on such logic quickly deteriorates into gibberish.

abhimishra 15y ago

Despite the pissing wars, I don't think it's that anyone is looking to 'create conflict', since I'm betting most people who respected Ritchie also respected Jobs. Rather, I'm guessing it's that everyone who is making statements similar to Pike's sees a 'hardcore scientist guy' ignored next to a 'well-marketed guy', and they are very uncomfortable with that (despite the fact that both of them were more than the stereotypes I'm calling out here). As for the argument you are calling 'tired', I respectfully disagree. Certainly we use a lot of things whose inventors we don't know - but Ritchie's work was remarkable in that it was fundamentally deeply technical (in a way that is appreciable to hardcore CS folks), extremely wide in scope (in a way that affects people from every walk of life), and recent-enough to warrant more attention from today's society. As for media - is it really OK for media (and by extension, society) to ignore a person with that kind of impact? I personally feel it shouldn't be culturally acceptable because that breeds a society where hard-science and scientists are not in the public consciousness (ahead of, for example, many random celebrities). Ultimately, the effect of that is more systemic IMHO (few scientists in politics, lots of politicians who can freely ignore science, reduced funding for fundamental scientific research, and so forth).

_delirium 15y ago
sees a 'hardcore scientist guy' ignored next to a 'well-marketed guy', and they are very uncomfortable with that (despite the fact that both of them were more than the stereotypes I'm calling out here) I guess I can see that, but to me it's not surprising; people die all the time, and attention to their death is mostly, I'd say, driven by how famous among the general public they were previously, which tends to favor politicians, athletes, popular musicians, businessmen, etc. The only thing that even makes it particularly noticeable here is the juxtaposition, since they were both in tech and died within a short distance. If it were Dennis Ritchie versus a big pop star, nobody would bother to raise an eyebrow at how much more front-page coverage the pop star got.
philwelch 15y ago
If it makes anyone feel any better, I don't think Steve Jobs was all that interested in his personal celebrity. He was intensely private and only ever made public appearances to promote Apple and its products, and he only did that because he was the best at it. It's the rest of society that made him into a folk hero for what he did, and the fact is our society undervalues technical people like Dennis Ritchie. As far as important people whose deaths went largely unheralded, the death of Norman Borlaug a couple of years ago is another great example.

Radix 15y ago

You're right and I winced when the Jobs comparison was made early in the article. I'm not sure that making comparisons to Jobs isn't the right thing to do even if it wasn't done well here. Jobs and Richie are both heroes to computing culture but after Jobs death we're left feeling that Richie deserves similar praise in the popular press, but unable to easily explain to the public that Dennis impact on the world was on the same level as Jobs'. Wired is a popular magazine now and needs a way to communicate Richie's impact to it's readers, so they use Jobs as a comparison.

rooshdi 15y ago

True, plus both contributed to technology in their own ways and I highly doubt either man cared much about their popularity status. Why can't we just pay homage to their individuality?

partition 15y ago

It's not a judgement about the relative contributions of Steve Jobs versus that of Dennis Ritches. It's a judgement about the shortsighted, irrational, overly individualistic mentality that attempts to attribute the ONE PERSON to any contribution, no matter how large. The fact is, that both Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs relied on entire _communities_ to accomplish what they supposedly "did on their own," which is the unsaid IDIOTIC hyperbole that is routinely thrown around HN, starting with "I did this project in a weekend posts" (which if they were honest, they would say "WE, me and the other people who built the fucking libraries, languages and other tools, did this project in a weekend). The problem is not Dennis Ritchie and it is not Steve Jobs. Both were people who were doing the best they could in the situation that they were in. It is YOU PEOPLE who are the problem. Your fundamentally dishonest premise that credit can be attributed to any one person in any project that involves more than masturbation (even that is a collaboration between the person and the providers of food that enabled him or her to get past puberty). Frankly, I'm sick of all this bullshit.