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How Steve Jobs' Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- overbroad 14y agoHow Dennis Ritchie's love of simplicity fueled everything that now matters in computing, including the operating systems and software Steve Jobs used to "fuel a design revolution". Apple makes beautiful hardware, but does that amount to simplicity? If the focus is Apple software, maybe in 1977 it was simple, but today it is anything but simple. Restrictive? Yes. Simple? No. When I want simplicity in software I look to New Jersey, not Cupertino.
- nachteilig 14y agoCan we please get over the (entirely reasonable) hurt feelings about Ritchie not getting the attention Jobs did? Jobs certainly made a lot of contributions to his field, even if they were in a different area than Ritchie, and it doesn't advance the discourse to constantly yell "BUT THIS OTHER GUY!" whenever someone is memorializing Jobs.
- SurfScore 14y agoDennis Ritchie > Steve Jobs == Nikola Tesla > Thomas Edison
- emiliobumachar 14y agoAmbiguous. Did you mean to compare the two comparisons, or the four people (that is, are you saying Jobs == Tesla?)
- SurfScore 14y ago(Dennis Ritchie > Steve Jobs) == (Nikola Tesla > Thomas Edison) That might be better
- overbroad 14y agoNo hurt feelings. No yelling. Here's my point: real simplicity is the stuff of Dennis Ritchie. Not Steve Jobs. As I said, Apple makes beautiful hardware. And you could say they promote a certain "simplicity" of use. Maybe you could even call Apple hardware "simple". I don't know. It's an enclosure with a board inside. What I do know is that once you get to the software side, Jobs is not the guy who should get credit for "simplicity" of design. That guy should be Dennis Ritchie. Alas, many journalists will never know this and write about it, because they don't spend time learning C and UNIX (whereas they do spend time using learning and Apple products that are built with C and UNIX). It is the simplicity Ritchie gave us, his design philosophy, that allows so much to be created, like the software that drives Apple products. Anyone can create simple things or complex things in software, but we all need to start with something simple in order to do the building. That something is not the work of Steve Jobs. It is the work of Dennis Ritchie and colleagues. If the title did not use the word "simplicity" I would have no comment. Jobs is a hero of design. But simplicity, to me, is another matter. He is not the true source. Even the early Apple computers where the software was "simple" were not the work of Jobs, but of his co-founder, who is not longer part of Apple.
- hnriot 14y agoI think the true source of simplicity goes way further back than Dennis Ritchie. Maybe look more in the arts that CS for the origins of minimalism and simplicity....
- JohnBooty 14y agoI agree with you: Ritchie's contributions, because they're at the core of so many things we use (including iOS and OSX) are more influential than Jobs' contributions (which are pretty darn influential). However, please re-read the headline you've got an issue with: "How Steve Jobs' Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution." Does the article claim that Jobs' creations were the simplest ever? Or that his simplicity trumped that of Ritchie? No. Also note that the article is clearly talking about a design revolution. Did Ritchie spark a design revolution? No. (Well, he did, in operating system design. But that's really not the sense of the word "design" the article is using...) So I don't understand what your problem is, other than the fact that you don't like Jobs' contributions a great deal. The claims made by the article are utterly orthogonal to the importance of Ritchie's work!
- webwielder 14y agoI think it's entirely reasonable that a consumer-centric tech visionary cut down in the prime of his career would get more attention than the death of a programmer-centric tech visionary whose major work occurred in the 60s and 70s.
- mparlane 14y agoHow Google's Love of Simplicity Fueled A Web Design Revolution