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Ken Thompson's Last Day At Bell Labs

Posted by Hemos on from the bye-bye-american-pie dept.

A reader writes: "I was doing some research on Bell-Labs, and I stumbled across Ken Thompson's Chess page. ( that's not the interesting part ) The interesting part is that at the top he says that he's leaving Bell Labs yesterday - Dec 1 2000, to pursue flight instruction full time. I dont know about everyone else, but it seems sort of important that one of the co-creators of Unix appears to be retiring."

12 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kernighan is retiring as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    He's "retiring" from Bell Labs, but he's joining the faculty of Princeton as a Full Professor - not quite leaving the field. See http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/

  2. Re:More stupid personality cults by swb · · Score: 3

    [I'm laughing that I got modded down for trolling, anyway...]

    You're right that there's certainly some hero worship everywhere, I guess on Slashdot in particular it goes too far, especially when it comes to Linus who never seems to get ANY criticism.

    Sure, he's done an amazing job steering Linux in addition to the early coding he's done. But in the here-and-now, how much of the actual 2.4 kernel is he personally responsible for coding? Any of it, or just a lot of leftover bits from 2.2 or 2.0?

    The other thing that rankles me is that many of these people are being given personal credit for an institutional product that might have been developed anyway, with or without them. I'll grant that Unix may not have been what it was without Ken, but was the institutional culture such at Bell Labs that Bell Labs would have come out with something similar to Unix even if he had never been involved?

    The same holds true for Linux. Sure, it wouldn't have been Linux but it's also not like it's the only open sourced Unix around. Given the nature of the BSD world, why wouldn't someone else have said "Let's do a free Unix from scratch."

    The counterpoint is something like Windows 2000. Now, you may think its the worst thing in the world, but we never hear about Max Microserf and his great contributions to Win2k, primarily because we rightly see the institutional nature of Win2k and don't associate the major personality Bill Gates with the actual coding or force behind its technical development.

    Mostly its the herosim and lack of critcism of the Slashdot heroes list that bugs me. I'm all for lauding the contributions of individuals, but I'm also sure that these same individuals are very open to criticism that they'll never get precisely because of the hero worship.

  3. Re:First Ed Roberts, now this by uncleFester · · Score: 3

    Bill Gates emptying Port-O-Lets.

    "oh what a relief it whiz..."

    --
    -'fester
  4. Gotta love the stereotype. by dal3 · · Score: 3
    Look to Ken's flight page to read a story about him flying in a MiG-29, along with a picture of him in front of the plane.

    I've never seen what he looks like, but I'm guessing the Unix engineer is the heavy-set bald guy with a bushy beard.

  5. passing the torch by SouperMike · · Score: 3

    well, who is the man going to pass the torch onto? i mean, all of the great minds throughout history have an understudy who either turns out evil or succeeds again. but seriously, it seems like the old guard of technology is being replaced by profit-driven dot-com people. is that the direction we want to take?

  6. And? by Malevolent · · Score: 3

    it seems sort of important that one of the co-creators of Unix appears to be retiring

    Er yes. People retire. This is not unusual - its what they do when they get old, whether they created Unix, Windows or Novelty Mugs...

    --
    -Tom
  7. Yep, that's him. by Nick+Driver · · Score: 3

    And holding a cup of coffee too.

  8. Ground Control to major ken by Calle+Ballz · · Score: 3

    Commencing countdown, major ken.......

  9. this for Ken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5

    FP for the man

  10. First Ed Roberts, now this by allanc · · Score: 5

    Ed Roberts, founder of MITS and creator of the Altair 8800 (widely acknowledged as the first personal computer), is now a small-town doctor.

    Ken Thompson, co-creator of Unix, is now a flight instructor.

    What's next? Douglas Engelbart becoming a professional bowler? Tim Berners-Lee realizing his life-long dream of becoming a plumber?

  11. A round of applause.... by LiteForce · · Score: 5
    This man helped to give the world an operating system that has survived the test of time and will most likely outlive anything Bill Gates or his gang will ever create... what greater legacy could this man have left to his profession or his peers ?

    99% of the world would like to think of Mr. Gates as the father of the operating system revolution - but the remaining 1% of the world who use and appreciate the elegance of Ken Thompson's work are enough to make him a character sorely missed from the field of computing...

    ... and let's not even forget his contribution in the form of the C programming language!

    I think I speak for everyone here when I say "THANKS FOR EVERYTHING KEN!!"

    "Hmmm.... they have the Internet on computers now ?" - Homer Simpson

    --
    "Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wuntime ewwors!" - Elmer Fudd
  12. I can see where this is going... by StandardDeviant · · Score: 5

    Yeah, sure, it starts out all innocent. He's just flying planes, right?

    Hmm, next thing you know he's taking lessons at SpaceCamp. Just a retirement hobby...

    Then first thing you know he's launched himself into space (who wouldn't want to curry favor with the phone company?), and is paradropping Plan 9 media kits into Linux/*BSD strongholds.

    Yes, it could be pretty successful, dropping Plan 9 from Outer Space...


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