Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always a senior writer, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: Hey there, all right. So, uh, we have had a
Speaker 1: series over the course of our podcast on famous people
Speaker 1: in technology, and we hadn't done one of those in
Speaker 1: a while. So, um, Jonathan and I were talking about
Speaker 1: topics to record and we thought, you know, we should
Speaker 1: we should, um, talk about one of the most famous
Speaker 1: or non famous famous people there are in tech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a guy who was incredibly influential in technology.
Speaker 1: In fact, without him, our technological landscape would be totally
Speaker 1: different as far as computer science goes. And this is
Speaker 1: this is of course, the the late great Dennis Ritchie
Speaker 1: Dennis McAllister Ritchie uh and or d M R as
Speaker 1: he was sometimes known. Uh. Tragically, Dennis Richie passed away
Speaker 1: last year and in fact his his body was discovered
Speaker 1: a week after Steve Jobs passed away, and so his
Speaker 1: death was somewhat eclipsed by Steve Jobs's death because Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs had a real cult of personality around him for
Speaker 1: various reasons. Right, he sort of embodied personified, if you will,
Speaker 1: the corporation of Apple, and so very much was identified
Speaker 1: with that brand. Now, Dennis Ritchie, his contributions, you could argue,
Speaker 1: went far beyond Steve jobs contributions. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of programmers out there were very much upset that his
Speaker 1: passing did not receive the same sort of coverage that
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs did. But Steve Jobs was a much more
Speaker 1: public figure, and um it was was sort of a
Speaker 1: marketing genius as well, not sort of, he was a
Speaker 1: marketing genius and whereas Dennis Richie was sort of an
Speaker 1: architect of of what computers do today, and and it
Speaker 1: was a different two different types of people. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: doing some research on on Dennis Ritchie, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's probably the way he preferred things. He wasn't really
Speaker 1: the kind of of public personality type. He wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: looking for, uh, the public plaudits, um, although I think
Speaker 1: he probably enjoyed being appreciated by by others um. And
Speaker 1: of course, uh really Steve Jobs and Apple wouldn't be
Speaker 1: where they you know, where they were at the time
Speaker 1: of Steve's passing last year, um without the efforts of
Speaker 1: Dennis Ritchie and and many others who worked with him.
Speaker 1: Very true, very true. And as you say, Dennis Ritchie
Speaker 1: was a very private man, so was Steve Jobs. But
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs would also put himself out in front of
Speaker 1: crowds order to talk about products. That's not what Dennis
Speaker 1: Richie did, although he did write one of the most
Speaker 1: famous books and programming, which we will get into. So
Speaker 1: Steve had a public face that's right, very very well put.
Speaker 1: And I have to say that before I really dive
Speaker 1: into here, I found one article in particular incredibly informative
Speaker 1: and touching really about Dennis Richie. And there are there
Speaker 1: are a lot of articles out there that have been
Speaker 1: written since his passing, but the one in particular that
Speaker 1: I want to mention because a lot of my information
Speaker 1: came from this article was written by cade Mets of Wired,
Speaker 1: and it's called Dennis Ritchie the Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood
Speaker 1: On and it's an excellent read. So I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you go to Wired and check that out before you
Speaker 1: before you turn this podcast off, write that down because
Speaker 1: it's a really good article. Yeah. I think that. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of the articles that came out immediately following
Speaker 1: Dennis Ritchie's passing had sort of a Steve Jobs connection
Speaker 1: simply because they passed at that time, within a week
Speaker 1: of each other. Yeah, yeah, there there There wasn't a
Speaker 1: connection connection like these guys hung out all the time.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like it wasn't like Jobs was and Ritchie
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, I think it come back at the
Speaker 1: local coffee shop. No, but I think there there's a
Speaker 1: tie in simply because uh, those two events were uh
Speaker 1: so close together. But um, yeah, let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: about Dennis here. He was born September nine in uh
Speaker 1: in New York, Bronxville, New York, Yep, yep. And he
Speaker 1: was and he passed away in New Jersey and Berkeley
Speaker 1: Heights on October and October. Yeah, we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: when because his body was found tragically, so we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly the day. His father was Alistair E. Ritchie,
Speaker 1: who was a scientist and an authority on switching circuit theory. Yes,
Speaker 1: and he was an employee with Bell Laboratories. Yes, laboratories. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's funny to me going going towards the traditional there.
Speaker 1: His father was Alistair and his middle name was mac alister,
Speaker 1: which son of Alister. Very well done. I liked that, um,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those just a little trivia
Speaker 1: type facts that you pick up when you're when you're
Speaker 1: researching someone like that. But nicely done, guys. He Uh.
Speaker 1: He was an apt student and he attended Harvard University.
Speaker 1: He graduated with degrees in physics and applied mathematics. And
Speaker 1: then when he decided to go into graduate school, also
Speaker 1: at Harvard, he began to work at the Massachusetts Institute
Speaker 1: of Technology in m T. And he worked in their
Speaker 1: computer center. And as he worked in the computer center,
Speaker 1: he became so interested in computer science he decided that
Speaker 1: was what he wanted to focus in as opposed to
Speaker 1: pure mathematics, although the two two fields have a lot
Speaker 1: in common with one another. And this is this is
Speaker 1: another illustration of how much, how much of an effect
Speaker 1: that these computer pioneers had UM when he was when
Speaker 1: he had made that decision he wanted to get into
Speaker 1: computer science. It wasn't like he said, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to UH to Harvard or m I team
Speaker 1: get my computer science degree. There wasn't a computer science
Speaker 1: degree at that time. UM, it's thanks to people like
Speaker 1: these that we have such a strong computer science field.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the work they did end up being
Speaker 1: the syllabus for for for those computer science degrees. I mean,
Speaker 1: like his his work on the on programming is one
Speaker 1: of the fundamental UH foundation blocks for learning about programming
Speaker 1: and computer science today. So while he uh is going
Speaker 1: through this graduate work, he ends up getting a PhD
Speaker 1: from Harvard. His dissertation was called program Structure and Computational Complexity,
Speaker 1: which was something he really did excel at that became
Speaker 1: a focus of his. While he was there working through this,
Speaker 1: he got a a request, a recruitment request from Sandia
Speaker 1: National Laboratories. And Sandia National Laboratories was a weapons research
Speaker 1: and testing company, and so they were offering him bookoo's
Speaker 1: of cash to be part of their team. But this
Speaker 1: was in the nineteen sixties and Richie kind of had
Speaker 1: this philosophy that perhaps a weapons testing facility might not
Speaker 1: be the place he would want to end up in,
Speaker 1: and so he turned it down. Although we we just
Speaker 1: mentioned Sandy National Laboratories, a short time ago on a
Speaker 1: podcast about supercomputers. So instead he went and joined a
Speaker 1: different lab, Bell Labs, same place as Dad had worked,
Speaker 1: and he joined in nineteen sixty seven, and uh he
Speaker 1: was first put on a project where he was going
Speaker 1: to be working with a team from m I T
Speaker 1: along with a fellow named and Thompson. Now that's a
Speaker 1: very important name as well. Thompson and Ritchie together have
Speaker 1: done a lot of work and laid that groundwork on
Speaker 1: computer science. They were originally working with this team from
Speaker 1: m I T. Thompson, by the way, also worked for
Speaker 1: Bell Labs. They were working with this team from m
Speaker 1: I T to build a new operating system called Multics
Speaker 1: m U L T I c S. However, halfway through
Speaker 1: the project, funding gets pulled. It. It just decided the
Speaker 1: project wasn't moving fast enough or it wasn't going to
Speaker 1: budget at any rate. For some reason or another, the
Speaker 1: project was was trashed and Richie and Thompson were a
Speaker 1: little put off by this because they wanted to build
Speaker 1: an operating system that would support their programming efforts across
Speaker 1: multiple platforms. And that was a real problem because back
Speaker 1: in these days in the sixties, a lot of these
Speaker 1: computers had proprietary operating systems that worked only upon that computer,
Speaker 1: So the machine then the operating system were married together.
Speaker 1: You didn't find the same operating system across multiple types
Speaker 1: of machines, kind of the way you could argue Apple works,
Speaker 1: you know, because the Apple os and the hardware are
Speaker 1: so closely aligned. Right right? Um? Now, did you mention
Speaker 1: who had been funding Multics? I did not. That would
Speaker 1: be the Advanced Research Projects Agency or a gosh that
Speaker 1: names sounds familiar. So since since poltics gets pulled, they
Speaker 1: decided they wanted to continue and try and build their
Speaker 1: own operating system. Now there's something else I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention about multics, though, was it? It was a time
Speaker 1: sharing system, which means that you go and hang out
Speaker 1: there and have a nice vacation. No, it means that
Speaker 1: you have multiple terminals that hook up to a centralized computer,
Speaker 1: and that as you are working on stuff, you get
Speaker 1: time allotted to you to access the computer's processing power.
Speaker 1: So when your can on it, that means nobody else
Speaker 1: is well. Although they way these time sharing systems worked
Speaker 1: is that it would switch back and forth so quickly
Speaker 1: as to seem like everyone's working simultaneously. But in truth,
Speaker 1: if you were to really divide up the time, very
Speaker 1: specific moments would be allocated to each user depending on
Speaker 1: how many users there are for that particular system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was it was single tasking. UM. And something
Speaker 1: else to note too is that this was in a
Speaker 1: time when UM, the programmer would need to create a
Speaker 1: series of punched cards to to uh to put this
Speaker 1: into the machine. So your programming is done on punched
Speaker 1: cards and then you give it to someone to compile
Speaker 1: for you and put into the machine. So once you're
Speaker 1: done writing the program, you hand off the deck of
Speaker 1: cards and go work on something else. And then the
Speaker 1: through the compiling process, you find out whether or not
Speaker 1: your program works exactly. So the so the programmer, Dennis
Speaker 1: Ritchie realized that there are important things going on here.
Speaker 1: He wanted to change. He wanted to have more of
Speaker 1: an impact. He wanted to feel like he was more
Speaker 1: engaged with the process. He also felt like, UM, he
Speaker 1: wanted to work with other people collaboratively on the computer system.
Speaker 1: UM and UH. You know these were things that influenced
Speaker 1: his and and Ken Thompson's decision making where they wanted
Speaker 1: to do with this next operating system. So Thompson starts
Speaker 1: to work on this, and he starts to build this
Speaker 1: operating system using assembly language. But here's the problem is
Speaker 1: simply language just did not give the full amount of
Speaker 1: control that they needed to build out an operating system
Speaker 1: that could manage all the data across all the different
Speaker 1: parts of this operating system. Because you gotta remember, the
Speaker 1: operating system handles data that's coming from user input, it's
Speaker 1: handling data from the file system, from from any storage
Speaker 1: that is connected to this computer. Uh, it has to
Speaker 1: handle the data that comes out of the processing after
Speaker 1: the CPUs processed it. There's a lot of different moving
Speaker 1: pieces here, well virtually moving pieces or pieces that are
Speaker 1: virtual anyway, there are a lot of pieces and so
Speaker 1: and so the problem is that the assembly language was
Speaker 1: not sophisticated enough to do this in an elegant way.
Speaker 1: So if the assembly language isn't doing it, what's your solution, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're Dennis Ritchie, your solution is build a new
Speaker 1: programming language. Yeah. The uh, the assembly language was so
Speaker 1: close to the kernel, to the operating system that or
Speaker 1: to the UM I'm sorry to the hardware that it
Speaker 1: just made life really difficult and so he what his solution.
Speaker 1: Uh didn't take you much farther away, but it was
Speaker 1: far enough away that it made a big difference in
Speaker 1: the way you would write at the time that he developed,
Speaker 1: and the language he developed was the C programming language.
Speaker 1: At the time that he developed that that was considered
Speaker 1: a high level programming language. Today we would not say that.
Speaker 1: We would say it's a much lower level because there
Speaker 1: are higher level programming languages that have been developed since then.
Speaker 1: But at the time it was considered a high level
Speaker 1: programming language, meaning that it was a further step out
Speaker 1: from the physical layer of the computer. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting, like first, before he did that, they started
Speaker 1: to think about using four tran to try and create
Speaker 1: the Unix operating system by the way, Unix. By the way,
Speaker 1: it was originally spelled un I c S, but because
Speaker 1: we pronounced that Unix, they just replaced the CS with
Speaker 1: an X eventually. Uh, so that's why it's spelled you
Speaker 1: in i x UM anyway, And it was a playoff
Speaker 1: the Multics name. That was what they were working on before.
Speaker 1: So they tried to use four trend. Well, four tran
Speaker 1: was as a programming language that was really really well
Speaker 1: suited for scientific applications uh, and it was too limited
Speaker 1: for them, so they abandoned using for trend. There were
Speaker 1: a few other options, but they were again meant for
Speaker 1: very specific applications, and they wanted something more general. So
Speaker 1: what what Richie did was he took uh. He looked
Speaker 1: at a programming language that Thompson had developed called the
Speaker 1: B programming language B as in boy h, which depending
Speaker 1: upon which theory you're reading, could have been named after
Speaker 1: his wife or a different programming language. Anyway, Richie took
Speaker 1: that and then he thought he got stung on the
Speaker 1: day that he there. You could have been who knows,
Speaker 1: I'll get Thompson on the phone, we'll have a chat.
Speaker 1: So Richie he ended up taking looking at the B
Speaker 1: programming language, and then he developed his own programming language
Speaker 1: called C. And again, the only reason that he built
Speaker 1: the C programming language, or at least the original intent,
Speaker 1: was just so they could build Unix. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of important to realize that because I think, based upon
Speaker 1: everything I've read, and granted this is all from secondhand information,
Speaker 1: it wasn't something that Dennis Richie wrote himself. It feels
Speaker 1: like he never knew how extensive This language would go
Speaker 1: throughout the computer field. He was doing it for a
Speaker 1: very practical purpose. He needed a different language in order
Speaker 1: to build the operaing system they wanted to have. So
Speaker 1: he never really realized at the time that C programming
Speaker 1: language was going to become such a huge, uh fundamental
Speaker 1: part of computer science. If he had, maybe he would
Speaker 1: have felt the pressure a bit more. Well actually, uh,
Speaker 1: in a way, he didn't need to feel as pressured. UM.
Speaker 1: It's good maybe that he that he was sort of
Speaker 1: divorced from that. UM. See, he was he was trying
Speaker 1: to use this uh, this old machine that they had
Speaker 1: at Bell Labs. It's a it was a Digital Equipment
Speaker 1: Corporation also known as Deck PDP seven UM and Unix.
Speaker 1: You know, they put Unix on that machine. Or that
Speaker 1: was the point of creating Unix, was to operate this machine,
Speaker 1: but also to operate others. UM. And it wasn't long
Speaker 1: after that after they were doing this that they got
Speaker 1: a PDP eleven computer. UM. And the nice thing about
Speaker 1: Unix was it was computer independent, so they would they
Speaker 1: would be able to use Unix on multiple different computers,
Speaker 1: not just that one particular machine. So UM, you know,
Speaker 1: they were able to to migrate Unix and run it
Speaker 1: on that other machine and use the programming language C
Speaker 1: to write software for it. Yeah. This this was a
Speaker 1: fairly new idea. Unix was not the first operating system
Speaker 1: that could be used on different machines, but it was
Speaker 1: one of the first. And I'm sorry I didn't go interrupt,
Speaker 1: and I was gonna say if you'll remember, we are
Speaker 1: not long ago. A few weeks ago we did a
Speaker 1: podcast about the beginnings of the Internet and one of
Speaker 1: the first challenges, and and and those guys were working
Speaker 1: on on these challenges about the same time as Richie
Speaker 1: and Thompson were working on They're trying to solve these problems. Um,
Speaker 1: they had multiple computers in different locations, and they all
Speaker 1: used a different operating system. So you know, these these
Speaker 1: computer pioneers were doing something very important. They've realized that
Speaker 1: this is just a pain in the neck, and you
Speaker 1: have to find ways to get computers on the same
Speaker 1: operating system, running the same programming language, take talking to
Speaker 1: each other in the same protocol in order to get
Speaker 1: them to work more efficiently. Well. And also the idea
Speaker 1: behind this is that for programmers, it makes things way
Speaker 1: easier because otherwise, if you're a programmer and you're going
Speaker 1: into programming, you had to learn how to navigate specific
Speaker 1: operating systems for specific machines, which meant that you might
Speaker 1: be an expert on two, maybe or three machines max.
Speaker 1: Two three different types machines, but then you get introduced
Speaker 1: to another one and the operating system might be completely
Speaker 1: foreign to you because each one had its own. The
Speaker 1: approach that that Richie and Thompson had meant that the
Speaker 1: same operating system could be found across multiple different machines.
Speaker 1: You could just learn that one, and once you've learned
Speaker 1: that one, you're good to go. You can program for
Speaker 1: all sorts of machines, which was a revolutionary development in
Speaker 1: computer science. You know, it's easy for us to forget
Speaker 1: that now because we're so used to that world, even
Speaker 1: though in some ways the old world is kind of
Speaker 1: coming back, with various manufacturers making very proprietary approaches to
Speaker 1: things so that you can't you know, the methodology used
Speaker 1: to work on one set of devices doesn't work on
Speaker 1: another set. We're starting to see that again now, But
Speaker 1: for a long time, it was this philosophy of let's
Speaker 1: develop something that's going to work across the entire landscape
Speaker 1: of computers. So that way, uh, you know, people can
Speaker 1: really concentrate on mastering programming and not have to worry
Speaker 1: about mastering it for just one set of type of
Speaker 1: computational device, whether it's a computer or handheld device, whatever
Speaker 1: it is. So that's sort of the development of Unix,
Speaker 1: and uh it got It's hard to explain the impact
Speaker 1: of this operating system. Part of the reason it had
Speaker 1: such a huge impact had to do with the constraints
Speaker 1: that A T and T was under because you had,
Speaker 1: you know, a T and T there the the head
Speaker 1: of what Bell Labs was, parent company of Bell Labs. Uh.
Speaker 1: They the reason why Unix. One of the reasons why
Speaker 1: Unix worked so well is that it ended up being
Speaker 1: distributed across various research facilities and universities. And the reason
Speaker 1: why it was distributed for free is because A T
Speaker 1: and T legally could not sell this operating system. And
Speaker 1: the reason for that is that at the time when
Speaker 1: this was going on, a T and T was a
Speaker 1: telephone monopoly in the United States, and as a telephone
Speaker 1: anyway essentially a monopoly. They don't have to be the
Speaker 1: only player to be a monopoly, they have to be
Speaker 1: the only mega major player, and they certainly were, and
Speaker 1: so they were essentially a monopoly in the United States.
Speaker 1: And because they were, they had to operate under what
Speaker 1: it's called a consent decree, and that consent decree meant
Speaker 1: that they could not branch into another industry like computers,
Speaker 1: because they already held a monopoly over another industry, so
Speaker 1: they could not by law sell this operating system. So
Speaker 1: instead they distributed it freely to these research facilities and
Speaker 1: universities which uh and they also offered up a license
Speaker 1: which allowed these these different institutions to take the operating
Speaker 1: system and tweak it to their own needs. So Unix
Speaker 1: ended up propagating across a wide array of educational organizations
Speaker 1: and other institutions and became a solid foundation for students
Speaker 1: who were interested in programming because now they suddenly had
Speaker 1: access to this operating system platform that they didn't have
Speaker 1: access to before, and it was free, so there was
Speaker 1: no cost to the students or to the universities, and
Speaker 1: it meant that the whole field of computer science accelerated
Speaker 1: exponentially because there was suddenly access to two very sophisticated
Speaker 1: tools that there wasn't before, so we started to see
Speaker 1: a lot more people going into programming. Eventually, this actually
Speaker 1: led to UH Richie writing a book, co writing a book,
Speaker 1: I should say, and that book is the C Programming Language.
Speaker 1: But it's frequently referred to as the K and R Book,
Speaker 1: And it's called K and R after the last names
Speaker 1: of the two authors. So Dennis Richie is the R,
Speaker 1: the K is Brian Carnigan, and UH. And so if
Speaker 1: you've ever heard anyone or if you are a programmer,
Speaker 1: you think of the K and R Book as being
Speaker 1: one of those sacred texts that that everyone values. If
Speaker 1: you've talked to a programmer and you've heard this phrase,
Speaker 1: that's what it refers to, is the C programming language.
Speaker 1: I remember um Lennis tor Vaults talked about the K
Speaker 1: and R book like being a big influence on him
Speaker 1: when he was getting into programming. And Uh. It's widely
Speaker 1: praised as a very accessible book on the subject of programming.
Speaker 1: And in part of that, it's because the C programming
Speaker 1: language itself is very relatively simple. It's got a very
Speaker 1: simple grammar and syntax and is paired down to just
Speaker 1: the bare necessities. Not the song from the jungle Book.
Speaker 1: I didn't sing it. It's going through my head already.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's paired down, so it's very it's it's
Speaker 1: very spare. It's meant to be that way so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't take up a lot of space and everything
Speaker 1: runs really smoothly and quickly on a machine. So, uh,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, A T and T releases Unix out right, well,
Speaker 1: years later they were no longer held under the consent decree.
Speaker 1: Turns out A T. T gut a little bit of
Speaker 1: a they had a little breakup with themselves. Breaking up
Speaker 1: is hard to do all over the place. Uh, and
Speaker 1: lots of other companies came out of this whole A
Speaker 1: T and T thing. Well, once that happened, they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we want Unix again. So they started
Speaker 1: to try and they tried to Yeah, exactly, they tried
Speaker 1: to re establish their proprietary hold over Unix. As a
Speaker 1: result of that, it's sort of helped first of all
Speaker 1: unichs to being distributed throughout universities. That that kind of
Speaker 1: started that seed of an idea of open source, this
Speaker 1: idea of code that is created and then distributed freely,
Speaker 1: and then people can actually manipulate that code under certain
Speaker 1: specific circumstances. And so that's kind of planted that seed. Well,
Speaker 1: once AT and T started try and grab that back,
Speaker 1: that seed really started to blossom. And uh, and that's
Speaker 1: problem more or less what prompted Richard Stallman to create
Speaker 1: the CANOW project. G N you and canows acronyms for
Speaker 1: its recursive acronymic stands for the News, not Unix. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't a a uh. It wasn't to
Speaker 1: dismiss what Richie and Thompson had done. It was more
Speaker 1: about the whole about the ownership. Yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: corporate side, not the programming side. That was sort of
Speaker 1: that prompted that. Um. But Unix has turned out to
Speaker 1: be a really versatile and uh important operating system and
Speaker 1: it it provides the kernel for a lot of or
Speaker 1: sometimes literally the kernel for a lot of other operating systems,
Speaker 1: including stuff that's found on web servers across the Internet.
Speaker 1: Lennox is not a direct derivative of Unix, but it
Speaker 1: is inspired, inspired by informed by Unix, and it's and
Speaker 1: it's very name you can it's sort of an homage,
Speaker 1: of course, it's a play on Lenis Torvald's name because
Speaker 1: Linus and Lennox. But the X you can tell is yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah so so because everyone always gets on me whenever
Speaker 1: I say that Lenox essentially comes from Unix, But I
Speaker 1: don't mean that Unix was manipulated to become Linux so
Speaker 1: much as Unix, like Lenus Torvald's, used Unix as a
Speaker 1: blueprint for building what would become Lenox. It's a spiritual relatives.
Speaker 1: But Unix also provides the foundation for other operating systems.
Speaker 1: It was what Windows was built on for ages. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is the foundation of mac os ten and iOS.
Speaker 1: If you were to actually dive into the mac os
Speaker 1: ten operating system, you would find that it is based
Speaker 1: off the Berkeley distribution of Unix, which is also called
Speaker 1: b s D four point two. Um. So I mean
Speaker 1: it's everywhere. And then not only that, but the C
Speaker 1: programming language ended up inspiring other computer scientists to develop
Speaker 1: programming languages that were kind of an evolution of C.
Speaker 1: Because ultimately there are other ways of programming computers. UH,
Speaker 1: but the the philosophy behind C programming pervades. A lot
Speaker 1: of those languages included object oriented languages like uh C
Speaker 1: plus plus or Java, UM, Python, Ruby, those are sort
Speaker 1: of derivatives UM, and they're both of those are designed
Speaker 1: to be very simple to use as well. UM. I
Speaker 1: think spiritually if you will again to use that UM
Speaker 1: the ideas that uh Richie and and a lot of
Speaker 1: his UH colleagues, if you will, across different companies, UM,
Speaker 1: basically a lot of the ideas that they came up with,
Speaker 1: things that they said, you know, what computing should be
Speaker 1: like this, UM, you know, sort of unspoken tenants. Uh,
Speaker 1: they kind of stuck around. I think people have gone,
Speaker 1: you know what, these guys had something, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they've inspired a lot of people, especially people like Dennis Richie,
Speaker 1: have inspired people to to emulate those and improve upon
Speaker 1: that work. UM. And a lot of the hardware that
Speaker 1: we see out there is built upon or with this
Speaker 1: C programming language. So that's the layer that exists on
Speaker 1: top of the actual physical hardware's you know, they've created, uh,
Speaker 1: the functionality through the C programming language. And Richie has
Speaker 1: been recognized multiple times with awards and and various UH accolades.
Speaker 1: I've got a list of them if you would like
Speaker 1: to hear some of them. Well, that's the funny thing is.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, you might wonder why if this
Speaker 1: is the first time you've heard of Dennis Richie, you
Speaker 1: might say, well, he's done a lot for computing and
Speaker 1: he's really influenced people all over the world. Why have
Speaker 1: we not really heard about him? And he's he is
Speaker 1: sort of he was sort of a private guy. He
Speaker 1: UM a very hard worker. He'd come in at noon, uh,
Speaker 1: leave in the middle of the afternoon, then go home
Speaker 1: and work until three in the morning sometimes. UM. Not
Speaker 1: the kind of person that spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: on a road show, appearing in the media, you know,
Speaker 1: to show off what he'd done. He wanted to improve
Speaker 1: on what he'd done and just kept working hard. But
Speaker 1: they did. He was recognized you as you say, by
Speaker 1: by many people and got some very prestigious awards. In three,
Speaker 1: he received, along with Thompson, the Touring Award for their
Speaker 1: work with operating systems, so of course named after Alan Turing.
Speaker 1: We we've done a full podcast about him as well.
Speaker 1: You should listen to that one. It's an interesting story. Um.
Speaker 1: In nine, he received the Richard W. Hemming Medal along
Speaker 1: with Thompson from my favorite organization in the world, just
Speaker 1: for the way I get to say it's acronym uh
Speaker 1: Y or I E. I never get tired of that.
Speaker 1: I know all of you do. In Richie and Thompson
Speaker 1: were made fellows of the Computer History Museum, which I
Speaker 1: still want to go to. I have yet to make
Speaker 1: it out to two Silicon Valley to check it out. UM.
Speaker 1: In nine UH Richie and Thompson again they received the
Speaker 1: National Medal of Technology from from Bill Clinton. UH In
Speaker 1: two thousand and five he received the Achievement Award from
Speaker 1: the Industrial Research Institute, and in Richie and Thompson received
Speaker 1: the Japan Prize for Information and Communications. So he's been
Speaker 1: recognized officially from various types of organizations multiple times, although
Speaker 1: of course you could argue that these organizations are really
Speaker 1: only famous within the niche of computer programmers, which I
Speaker 1: think is fairly That's that's fair to say. It's not like,
Speaker 1: it's not like they are thrust into the public eye
Speaker 1: like an Apple keynote always is. UM. But yes, it
Speaker 1: is very clear that Richie played a pivotal role really
Speaker 1: to the development of computer science in in our modern age,
Speaker 1: and that without his work it would be very, very
Speaker 1: different and we might not even have things like the
Speaker 1: smartphones that we use today, at least not in the
Speaker 1: form factor that we're used to and the functionality that
Speaker 1: we're used to. It might you know, it's not to
Speaker 1: say that something else wouldn't have come along, but there's
Speaker 1: no way of knowing what that would have been. So um,
Speaker 1: our hat is off to you, Mr Richie. Our world
Speaker 1: is better for you having worked in it. And so
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we took this time to really recognize
Speaker 1: him and and talk about his life and his work,
Speaker 1: especially to you guys out there who may have not
Speaker 1: been familiar with him. Um. And if you're interested in programming,
Speaker 1: if you want to get into it. And the book
Speaker 1: that he co wrote is considered one of the the
Speaker 1: texts that you have to read, and it's and every
Speaker 1: single programmer I've ever taught to has praised it for
Speaker 1: its readability, saying that it's actually, for a book about
Speaker 1: programming languages, very easy to read. Now, your mileage may
Speaker 1: vary because some of us, even for a very easy
Speaker 1: book of programming languages, start to think about puppies. Five
Speaker 1: pages in. I'm not naming names, okay, but j S
Speaker 1: might be his initials, all right, So that wraps up
Speaker 1: this discussion. I think if you guys have any suggestions
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Speaker 1: a company, a particular product, or maybe just how a
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Speaker 1: those is text stuff. Hs W and Chris and I
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