Posted on 10/17/2011 7:21:53 AM PDT by fremont_steve
In the last two weeks, we have lost two people who had immense influence on our industry.
It is undeniable that Steve Jobs brought us innovation and iconic products like the world had never seen, as well as a cult following of consumers and end users that mythicized him.
The likes of which will probably be never seen again.
I too, like many in this industry, despite my documented differences with the man and his company, paid my respects, and have acknowledged his influence.
But the “magical” products that Apple and Steve Jobs — as well as many other companies created owe just about everything we know and write about in modern computing as it exists today to Dennis Ritchie, who passed away this week at the age of 70.
Dennis Ritchie!
(Excerpt) Read more at zdnet.com ...
Hey! Notice US!
Linux-cult alert.
Looks like a cheap shot at Jobs, to me.
Dennis Ritchie was a pioneer. His work is well known to techies, but Ritchie was first and foremost a techie. Jobs was a visionary, and idea man. Comparing the two is like comparing George Stienbrenner to Derek Jeter. Same business, different jobs. (Pun not intended).
Steve Jobs was remarkable, and would have done something remarkable, regardless of the environment.
Dennis Ritchie was remarkable, and would have done something amazing, even if Bell Labs didn’t exist.
The author of this article should be ashamed.
Why the Linux bash? Non-sequitur.
And maybe some of us get tired of never getting credit for finishing college. Sure there is a place for lauding the wildly successful college dropouts; there’s also a place for those who went far and finished.
This situation is not unique. Howard Hughes dropped out of college, as well. Both men had the aptitude to have more than a pedestrian knowledge of their fields. More importantly, they had the vision and resources to find, hire, and retain the best talent available. Hughes and Jobs changed aerospace and computing, though both fields were established prior to their involvement.
[eta] ...and were also wildly successful.
First - I’m not ashamed - the article is RIGHT ON! The article is mostly a listing of facts! I literally had this same discussion with a friend of mine yesterday - and I’ll be glad to take you down a similar set of reasoning..
First - what did Steve Jobs directly invent? He has his names on several patents, but that is because he was the CEO of the company!
Will start our story with the Apple-1. Woz did all of the engineering, SJ was the business head. He didn’t invent it - Woz did.
Did SJ invent the Graphic Computer Interface? Nope - that was done at Xerox PARC. He hired technologists who ran with the idea, and created a low-cost implementation (which still cost to much to gather much market share) and marketed the MacIntosh.
His business life has been relatively free of interference of the Ritchie inheritance up to this point.. Apple DID have people trying to port Unix to the Macs...but SJ wasn’t at Apple at the time.
Next - he did Next... he paid technologists to invent the NextStep OS/Objective C - which is an improvement on SmallTalk. This flopped on the Market - again too expensive.
Note - Objective/C? This is where the Ritchie legacy intertwines with SJ.
IMAC - style points... and ONLY style points - who knew people wanted to by Blueberry colored computers?
iPod - re-invention of the Diamond RIO - stylishly... again style points with a better user interface that was a market success. He didn’t invent the MP3 player - he improved it...
iPad - not the first, second or third tablet...he added style to it AGAIN. The user experience is more polished here too.
Yet Ritchie’s inheritance has affected the REST of us much more directly. The internet RUNS on machines that are based on his ideas of how an OS should work, and the lowest layers are coded in C.
It can’t be cheap shots when we’re talking facts here. I’ve got NOTHING against SJ except that I’m glad I never worked for him directly - the stories around the valley about that are that it was often NOT a pleasant experience. I merely don’t idolize him.
He was a human being with lots of good points and bad points. I believe the underlying contribution of Mr. Ritchie FAR exceeds those of SJ though.
The loss of Jobs and Ritchie is akin to the loss of Ford and Barnett: the latter set the groundwork technology, the former turned it into a culture-changing product.
I’d argue with this some - I don’t think SJ changed “computing.” He certainly changed how consumers interact with technology... but not the science/engineering involved.
Further - Hughes DID engineering. He directly manipulated how his planes were put together. SJ certainly directed how his computers were put together from a Look and Feel viewpoint - but not the hardware/software plumbing involved.
I think your analogy breaks down there.
Hmmmm,nothing at all said about electronics which store gigabytes on a surface almost too small to see, transistors which switch at nanosecond rates, batteries that last for years and run for hours.
Sure glad I didn’t study any of that old electrical engineering stuff.
All the systems described would work in other programming languages (albeit perhaps less efficiently).
But none would work at all without the exploitation of quantum physics provided by the transistor, along with the associated improvements in just plain electronics.
Point! All the systems described WOULD be written in other languages.. but they weren’t! As you said - less efficiently.
As for requiring Electrical Engineering to build the computers, which run on the physics and chemistry of the modern electronics industry - also true.
The realization should be that our progress forward is that we stand on those inventions that came before. Dennis Ritchie was as an icon in the world of Software Engineering. The article is really pointing out that SJ’s contributions really wasn’t as a technologist - and that much of what Steve jobs created stood on Dennis Ritchie’s works.
“went far and finished”
Far beyond what, finished what, exactly?
See #6.
Seems I’m in typo mode today.
I don’t think it’s necessary to compare the two men, both have unquestionably made big contributions and are worthy of respect. I had an early interaction with Steve Jobs in the Apple II era (and have the business card to prove it), in which he was arrogant and rude, but that doesn’t negate whhat he accomplished.
For the record, the history of Apple must also acknowledge the impact Alan Kay, a researcher at Xerox PARC had on the Mac, and also on Windows. He created the first GUI and mouse (as demonstrated by the Xeror Alto and Star), and PARC worked with Jobs and Apple to incorporate these elements into the initial Macintosh. Most every innovator will admit that he stood on the shoulders of giants, and Alan Kay is one of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay
NexT Step was a GUI riding on top of a UNIX Mach kernel. The Mac OS is a GUI riding on top of a full UNIX machine. You can even directly access the UNIX system and run it with UNIX commands
Well sir, I’m working in a 5 person start-up right now. Maybe it will be the next apple... time will tell.
You show your own myopic view point by painting all engineers with the same brush, and can’t read the nuances of the things I said. I listed facts in a brief manner. Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the business acumen the man had in any way, shape, or form.
Further - the REAL point of the article is that people HAVE been comparing him to the likes of Edison. He wasn’t Edison. Heck - neither was Ritchie. Edison was the the end-all - he was both the technologist AND the Visionary.
Look - Jobs was a hell of a CEO. It can be argued that he saved Apple by force of his will second time around there. In 1996, Apple was dead company walking until he came back.
His affect on the interaction with the way the public interacts with technology is what he was good at.
On the other hand - Ritchie’s contribution to the fundamentals is what made his contribution important. He created the tools the rest of us use to build this technology.
Uhm - not originally - the original MacOS - running on the 128K Mac was written in Pascal. It derived from the LISA system before it with improvements. It owes no real debt to Dennis Ritchie.
Further - the MACH OS is not unix. It is a Microkernel written at CMU that has a layer which emulates the Unix system calls. No point in beating a dead horse about the difference between traditional unix built on monolithic kernels and microkernels - see the arguments between Tannenbaum and Torvalds for that distinction.
You are correct that NextStep was built on Mach.
Steve Jobs got Apple to buy Next, then used that as the seed for OS-X.
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