American - Scientist | September 9, 1941 -
I fix things now and then, more often tweak HTML and make scripts to do things.
Dennis Ritchie
NowMoreFixNow And ThenThings
Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9.
WorkPlanDoneEditingSoftwareAny
At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas?
TimeIdeasNewDoneOthersSame
At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they're designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler.
PeopleMeLanguageAdviceLearnNew
I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate.
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I'm just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.
EarlyGoTellWhereJustObserver
When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd.
ThinkAdviceBackGoThanksGive
My work was fairly theoretical. It was in recursive function theory. And in particular, hierarchies of functions in terms of computational complexity. I got involved in real computers and programming mainly by being - well, I was interested even as I came to graduate school.
WorkSchoolComputersProgramming
One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.
SuccessWrongToo MuchThingsSense
At MIT, mostly what I did was documentation. I sort of read things. Wrote some descriptions of various aspects of the file system. Did not really do very much programming at all. At least on Multics.
ProgrammingSystemThingsReadSome
My father worked for Bell Labs. Hence, I knew very much about the place. I knew it because also he was involved with telephony.
FatherPlaceBellInvolvedBecause
The first phase of C was - really, it was two phases in short succession of, first, some language changes from B, really adding the type structure without too much change in the syntax, and doing the compiler. The second phase was slower; it all took place within a very few years, but it was a bit slower, so it seemed.
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