Slashdot Mirror
Dennis Ritchie Interview
A reader wrote to us with
the news that Linuxworld is currently running an interview with Dennis Ritchie, Unix guy, C author, and Plan 9 [?] proponent.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
and then you posted a comment so your moderation was undone, so it's still at +2.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Different endings in Greek form their plurals differently, much as in English. So, yes, the plural of -os is -oi, but at least in modern Greek (I don't know ancient Greek) the pural of -i (Octopodi is octopus) is -ia (Octopodia).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yes, but the standard didn't need extending at all. long could just have been made 64-bit (or 128 or 256 or whatever). There was no need to add a new "long long" type. That said, you could argue the case for needing a new type to hold integers larger than the machine's word length, and retain a traditional unsigned long as the word length (so that you can cast to and from pointers).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
VMS FUD? Whatchya talkin about Willis? How can you FUD a great machine like the VAX? Slashdot has had a few great articles on this legend. VMS, although different than UNIX in terms of syntax, was also a very reliable system used for much the same scientific purposes. For three years I was at my university, the only two times the VAX failed was when a garbage truck backed into the substation transformer or air conditioner failed. Despite its arcane syntax (cd == SET DEFAULT .[DIRECTORY]) it and the people who used it were great.
Plan9 != VMS
wow, the lameness filter said no to the above line.
------------
a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
I bet he could be talking about Modula-2 which is beautiful in many ways. (but silly in some other ways too...)
I guess the heyday of M2 was in the late 1980's when some good cheap compilers were available for Atari ST's and Amigas. The C compilers that I could get for my Atari ST either didn't have any floating point support, or they were too expensive for a poor student. M2 was $30 I think, so I learned it.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Ada was beautiful. Generic types. OO design... Speed on par with C...
Compilers were too expensive at the time so everyone went C instead.
To tell the truth, I don't know how Linus and his merry band manage so well -- I couldn't have stood it with C.
This is a good question. How do they manage? I can't even get my group of friends to pick a resturant.
Also, "Linus and his merry band" would be a great name for a rock group.
Thank you for not thinking.
Shouldn't that be P and not D?
How about reusing parameterized type syntax, e.g. long<64>, long<128>. For that matter, long would be identical to int<2> or even char<4>.
The "long long" hack in C99 is just plain stupid. How is C/C++ going to be patched *cough hacked cough* to support 128-bit integers? "long long long"?
The only obvious solution - 128 bit integers will be represented by either "loooong" or "damn long", and "long long" will be depricated in favor of "looong" or "rather long".
The new language hybrid thus produced will be called "(C)obol" - the (C) means I have the copyright, and will demand royalties for each line of code produced to encourage terseness in the industry.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm not sure if you're asking about an undergrad or graduate degree - for me the undergrad degree in computer science was a great idea but I'm sure going to grad school would have been a huge mistake for me - I was not ready for that at the time.
On the general question of degrees, I don't know about other degrees but I've found most of my computer science degree to be incredibly helpful - and of all the people I've worked with most of the people I've respected the most and produced the best work seemed to have CS degrees. Of course there are exceptions both ways, but a CS degree is a great way to spend a few years thinking about CS in general and then spend a while applying all of the cool abstract things you knew.
I think probably going back to school for a year or so every ten years would be the best possible idea, but I'm not sure if I'll listen to my own advice.
Related to your question is my opinion on why so many of these cool things seem to come from people who have graduate degrees - that's because people who have graduate degrees are very used to publishing ideas, and also able to document ideas in a clear and readable fashion (for the most part). Even if you have an undergraduate degree you are probably not used to writing at the level a grad student is required to, and it will not be in your nature to do so if you have a cool idea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A lot of us have come to believe that degree is not worth the cost, but I have noticed that many people who come up with very neat stuff have degrees, I am begining to ponder if my choice of skipping school to work is the right one. Anyone wanna help me compile a list of smart people and their inventions, and what degree they have, etc.
"Ritchie joined Bell Laboratories in 1968 after obtaining his graduate and undergraduate degrees from Harvard University."
segmond
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Hmm, you better tell Vita Nuova (the Inferno people). They mistakenly believe it's an OS. Here's an excerpt from their announcement:
Some seem to think that browsers should become operating systems, with sprawling functionality and clunky system calls. We thought it was much more stylish and productive to embed a proper
operating system inside a browser. So we did.
Imagine that, putting an OS inside a browser. What does that do to Microsoft's antitrust case argument that the browser should be part of the OS?
Unless I miss my guess, the Standard doesn't specify a size for char, either. It does guarantee that char <= short int <= int <= long int, but nothing more than that.
Note that it's perfectly valid to have a C compiler where all the integer data types are of the exact same size.
One well-known person in the C++ community was asked to speculate on what the next ISO C++ Standard would include (this was about a year after the standard had been released). He answered, "I love speculation. Work on [the next library] will start in March, 2012, shortly after the new ISO C++ 2011 was adopted. It will support 256 bit integer types, and a new library header <voicerecognition>."
There have been plenty of direct "successors" to C++ in the last decade. None have caught on.
If you have hardware to support 128-bit stuff, then the system headers will have a datatype already. Personally, I think exponents are the way to go: "long^6 foo;" for a one-kilobit signed integer.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Is Plan 9 taking off?? I would really like to ditch this Linux crap and use something a little more current!!
even though plan 9 itself is 9 years old
He helped write the best programming language, best operating system, and my favourite book (K&R)
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Many Plan 9 ers have lamented the loss of Alef. If you are interested in Alef like languages you should check out Limbo, the inferno programming language. Inferno runs hosted under Plan 9 and many other operating systems. There's even an browser plug-in so that you can run limbo apps in an Internet Explorer web-page!
Didn't Digital ditch the VAX architecture? OR was it just the VMS OS
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
no, the proposed change is:
char char char char char char char char char char char char char char char char
You could make long long 256-bit, long 128-bit, int 64-bit, and short 32-bit if you really, really needed to. The standard certainly permits that.
What really grinds me is that so many people assume sizeof(long) == 4 or worse sizeof(long) == sizeof(int) == 4. On the C6000-family DSPs, long is actually 40-bits long whereas int is 32-bits. You'd be surprised how many people this trips up.
--Joe --Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Program Intellivision!
The "long long" hack in C99 is just plain stupid. How is C/C++ going to be patched *cough hacked cough* to support 128-bit integers? "long long long"?
Just make "long long" 128 bits. Make "short long long" 64 bits. Though, I'm not sure what "short long" or "long short" would be... maybe 16 bits?
cpeterso
cheers,
mike
In a past interview, he specifically mentioned Standard ML as a beautiful and practical language that he was surprised didn't catch on.
Does anyone know what [programming] languages he is specifically talking about?
I was curious if anyone had started working on a successor to C++ yet?
i.e. The "long long" hack in C99 is just plain stupid. How is C/C++ going to be patched *cough hacked cough* to support 128-bit integers? "long long long"?
Don't get me wrong, I love C, but it needs to be cleaned up, and morphed into D.
Dennis Ritchie, Unix guy, C author, and Plan 9[?] proponent.
Great, cheap sets, dentists for monsters, cardboard headstones and rubber octopuses (octopi?) That's all I need.........
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Nearing the end of my Ph.D. graduate career, having come in straight from undergrad, I suppose I'm qualified to comment on why a degree might be useful :)
:), you will make friends who may be able to help you professionally later (and vice versa). Because college is so social, this is, perhaps, an easier way to start those skills compared to starting at work, where it may be more difficult initially to develop strong friendships with coworkers.
:( ) may lose our job. Anecdotal evidence suggests if two middle-aged people are applying for a job, all other things being equal, the one with a degree will be hired over the one with no degree but four extra years of experience. (YMMV)
:) and get the M.S. in a few years.
1) Like anything else (sports, programming, driving) "thinking" is an activity that can be made more productive & efficient through training, practice, and guidance. College can help you develop strong analytical thinking skills.
2) In certain fields it is very helpful, if not necessary. It would be very difficult to go into, say, chemistry, chem. engineering, optics, EE, etc. without the focused study required of a college degree. One could self-teach themselves, say optical science, but it would be much more challenging than learning it with other students, and being taught by professors who already understand the field.
3) Networking. networking. networking. (networking) It's an early chance to shmooze. Even if you're a socially awkard, introspective nerd (somewhat like me
4) Credibility. The job market for scientists & engineers is great right now. But the US economy *will* slow down, at some point. When that happens you (or I
5) Further traing and/or change fields. Getting a degree later in life can be an effective way to switch careers, or move to a different field within your general profession. For example, an EE might get a M.S. in optics, so he can more easily get a job in the fiber communications field.
Those are just some ideas. There is no right or wrong choice here -- it's a matter of what's the best choice for someone given their life, desires, etc.
Assuming you are in your 20's (post typical undergrad age), then perhaps a M.S. could be a good fit (and just skip the whole undergrad thing). There are some excellent nine-month, course-only Masters Degree programs. These you can take a year off from work, get a M.S., and then get a new job. Or you can go part time (on your company's dime
In general, people who return to school after working are more focused and have a much clearer idea of what they want to make happen after finishing the degree. If you need to get a degree, or just more coursework, use that to your advantage.
One final thought: summer school. Departments often have two-week summer school programs which broadly cover some field. This can be a good way to: brush up on old material, schmooze, test the waters if considering changing careers.
Hope that helped. College/post-grad degrees are certainly the norm today, and generally helpful, but not required it seems. And while more difficult sometimes, people can always return to school later in life. It's not an all-or-nothing choice at age 18.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
lots harder.
in plan 9, any old program can present a filesystem, and it can then interpret operations on that filesystem at will. basically, you can mount one end of a pipe. filesystem requests on any file or directory below the mountpoint turn into RPC messages down the pipe. so MIME mailboxes are presented as a filesystem, the editor cum window system acme allows program interaction through a filesystem, access to ftp is provided through a filesystem, etc, etc.
plan 9 doesn't have an ioctl call, which means that an enormous amount of functionality is available via straight shell commands (echo, cat, et al).
ok, so the ideas might not be completely new, but the implementation works really well in practise. and it means that a sophisticated system can be built out of small chunks of code, which in turn means that the whole system is more understandable and more reliable.
i can create windows with echo, look back through history with cd and extract parts of cpio archives with cat - and all of this functionality can be transparently exported and imported securely across the net.
tell me that's not pushing it further!