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.
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.
Dennis Ritchie was also a crook on the lamb in Europe that was given a pass by Clinton after Mrs. Ritchie dumped a ton of cash into the Democrat election machine. Not someone I would want my children to emulate.