Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech, and it's time for another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. This episode originally published on July two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. It's titled Spotlight on Dennis Ritchie. So who
Speaker 1: was Dennis Ritchie and what were his contributions to technology?
Speaker 1: As it turns out, they were many and they were significant.
Speaker 1: So Chris Ballette and I sit down and talk about
Speaker 1: this influential technologist. Enjoy. 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 Ritchie 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 as contributions. In fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of programmers out there were very much upset that
Speaker 1: his passing did not receive the same sort of coverage
Speaker 1: that Steve Jobs did. But Steve Jobs was a much
Speaker 1: more public figure, and um it was was sort of
Speaker 1: a marketing genius as well, not sort of, he was
Speaker 1: a marketing genius and whereas Dennis Richie was sort of
Speaker 1: an architect of of what computers do today, and and
Speaker 1: it was a different two different types of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And doing some research on on Dennis Ritchie, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's probably the way he preferred things. He wasn't
Speaker 1: really the kind of of public personality type. He wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily looking for, uh, the public plaudits. Um, Although I
Speaker 1: think he probably enjoyed being appreciated by by others. UM.
Speaker 1: And of course, 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 Dennis
Speaker 1: Richie and many others who worked with him. Very true,
Speaker 1: very true. And as you say, Dennis Ritchie was a
Speaker 1: very private man, so was Steve Jobs. But Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: would also put himself out in front of crowds in
Speaker 1: order to talk about products. That's not what Dennis Richie did,
Speaker 1: although he did write one of the most famous books
Speaker 1: and programming, which we will get into. So Steve had
Speaker 1: a public face that's right, very very well put. And
Speaker 1: I have to say that before I really dive into here,
Speaker 1: I found one article in particular incredibly informative and touching
Speaker 1: really about Dennis Richie. And there are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of articles out there that have been written since
Speaker 1: his passing, But the one in particular that I want
Speaker 1: to mention because a lot of my information came from
Speaker 1: this article was written by Cade Mets of Wired and
Speaker 1: it's called Dennis Ritchie the Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On,
Speaker 1: and it's an excellent read. So I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: go to Wired and check that out before before you
Speaker 1: turn this podcast off, write that down because it's a
Speaker 1: really good article. Yeah. I think that. Um, a lot
Speaker 1: of the articles that came out immediately following Dennis Ritchie's
Speaker 1: passing had sort of a Steve jobs connection simply because
Speaker 1: they passed at that time there a week of each other. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there There wasn't a connection connection like these guys
Speaker 1: hung out all the time. It wasn't like it wasn't
Speaker 1: like Jobs was and Ritchie all right, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you come back at the local coffee shop. No, but
Speaker 1: I think there there's a tie in simply because uh
Speaker 1: those two events were uh so close together. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about about Dennis here. He was born
Speaker 1: September nine in uh in New York, Bronxville, New York, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And he was and he passed away in New Jersey
Speaker 1: and Berkeley Heights on October and October. Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly when because his body was found tragically, so
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly the day. His father was Alistair E. Ritchie,
Speaker 1: who was a scientist and an authority on switching circuit theory,
Speaker 1: and he was an employee with Bell Laboratories or laboratories. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny to me going going towards the traditional there.
Speaker 1: His father was Alistair and his middle name was mac Alistair,
Speaker 1: which son of Alistair. Very well done. I like that, yes, 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 he
Speaker 1: was an apt student and he attended Harvard University. He
Speaker 1: graduated with degrees in physics and applied mathematics. And then
Speaker 1: when he decided to go into graduate school, also at Harvard,
Speaker 1: he began to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Speaker 1: m i T. And he worked in their computer center.
Speaker 1: And as he worked in the computer center, he became
Speaker 1: so interested in computer science he decided that was what
Speaker 1: he wanted to focus in as opposed to pure mathematics,
Speaker 1: although the two two fields have a lot in common
Speaker 1: one another. And this is this is another illustration of
Speaker 1: how much, how much of an effect that these computer
Speaker 1: pioneers had um when he was going when he had
Speaker 1: made that decision he wanted to get into computer science
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he said, Oh, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: to UH, to Harvard or m I team get my
Speaker 1: computer science degree. There wasn't a computer science degree at
Speaker 1: that time. UM, it's thanks to people like these that
Speaker 1: we have such a strong computer science field. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the work they did end up being the syllabus for
Speaker 1: for for those computer science degrees. I mean, like his
Speaker 1: his work on the on programming is one of the
Speaker 1: fundamental UH foundation blocks for learning about programming and computer
Speaker 1: science today. So while he uh is going through this
Speaker 1: graduate work, he ends up getting a PhD from Harvard.
Speaker 1: His dissertation was called program Structure and Computational Complexity, which
Speaker 1: was something he really did excel at that became a
Speaker 1: 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 Ken 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 his team from
Speaker 1: m I T. Thompson, by the way, also worked for
Speaker 1: Bell Labs. They were working with his 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 platform forms and that was a real problem because
Speaker 1: back in these days, in the sixties, a lot of
Speaker 1: these computers had proprietary operating systems that worked only upon
Speaker 1: that computer, So the machine and the operating system were
Speaker 1: married together. You didn't find the same operating system across
Speaker 1: multiple types of machines, kind of the way you could
Speaker 1: argue Apple works, you know, because the Apple OS and
Speaker 1: the hardware are so closely aligned. Right right. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: did you mention who had been funding Multics? I did not.
Speaker 1: That would be the Advanced Research Projects Agency or a
Speaker 1: Gosh that names sounds familiar. So since since poltics gets pulled,
Speaker 1: they decided they wanted to continue and try and build
Speaker 1: their own operating system. Now there's something else I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention about multics though, was 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 us centralized
Speaker 1: computer and that as you are working on stuff, you
Speaker 1: get time allotted to you to access the computer's processing power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when you're working 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 you're programming is done on punched cards,
Speaker 1: and then you give it to someone to compile for
Speaker 1: you and put into the machine. So once you're done
Speaker 1: writing the program, you hand off the deck of cards
Speaker 1: and go work on something else. And then the through
Speaker 1: the compiling process, you find out whether or not your
Speaker 1: program works exactly. So the so the programmer Dennis Ritchie
Speaker 1: realized that there are important things going on here. He
Speaker 1: wanted to change. He wanted to have more of an impact.
Speaker 1: He wanted to feel like he was more engaged with
Speaker 1: the process. He also felt like, UM, he wanted to
Speaker 1: work with other people collaboratively on the computer system. UM
Speaker 1: and uh. You know, these were things that influenced his
Speaker 1: and and Ken Thompson's decision making where they wanted to
Speaker 1: do with this next operating system. So Thompson starts to
Speaker 1: work on this, and he starts to build this operating
Speaker 1: system using assembly language. But here's the problem is simply
Speaker 1: language just did not give the full amount of control
Speaker 1: that they needed to build out an operating system that
Speaker 1: could manage all the data across all the different parts
Speaker 1: of this operating system. Because you gotta remember, the operating
Speaker 1: system handles data that's coming from user input, it's handling
Speaker 1: data from the file system, from from any storage that
Speaker 1: is connected to this computer. Uh, it has to handle
Speaker 1: the data that comes out of the processing after the
Speaker 1: CPUs processed it. There's a lot of different moving pieces here,
Speaker 1: well virtually moving pieces or pieces that are virtual anyway,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of pieces and so and so
Speaker 1: the problem is that the assembly language was not sophisticated
Speaker 1: enough to do this in an elegant way. So if
Speaker 1: 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 the assembly language was so close
Speaker 1: to the kernel, to the operating system that or to
Speaker 1: the UM I'm sorry to the hardware that it just
Speaker 1: made life really difficult. And so he what his solution
Speaker 1: didn't take you much farther away, but it was far
Speaker 1: enough away that it made a big difference in the
Speaker 1: 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 developed that, that was considered a
Speaker 1: 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 trand 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: few other options, but they were again meant for very
Speaker 1: specific applications, and they wanted something more general. So what
Speaker 1: what Richie did was he took, uh, he looked at
Speaker 1: a programming language that Thompson had developed called the B
Speaker 1: programming language B as in boy h, which depending upon
Speaker 1: which theory you're reading, could have been named after his
Speaker 1: wife or a different programming language. Anyway, Richie took that
Speaker 1: and then he thought he got stung on the day
Speaker 1: that he uh, there you could have been who knows.
Speaker 1: I'll get Thompson on the phone. We'll have a chat.
Speaker 1: Chris and I have a lot more to say about
Speaker 1: Dennis Ritchie, but first let's take a quick break. So
Speaker 1: Richie he ended up taking looking at the B programming language,
Speaker 1: and then he developed his own programming language called C.
Speaker 1: And again, the only reason that he built the C
Speaker 1: programming language, or at least the original intent, was just
Speaker 1: so they could build Unix. And it's kind of important
Speaker 1: to realize that because I think based upon everything I've read,
Speaker 1: and granted this is all from secondhand information. It wasn't
Speaker 1: something that Dennis Richie wrote himself. It feels like he
Speaker 1: never knew how extensive this language would go throughout the
Speaker 1: computer field. He was doing it for a very practical purpose.
Speaker 1: He needed a different language in order to build the
Speaker 1: operating system they wanted to have. So he never really
Speaker 1: realized at the time that C programming language was going
Speaker 1: to become such a huge, uh, fundamental part of computer science.
Speaker 1: If he had, maybe he would have felt the pressure
Speaker 1: a bit more. Well, actually, in a way, he didn't
Speaker 1: need to feel as pressured. UM. It's good baby that
Speaker 1: he that he was sort of divorced from that. UM.
Speaker 1: He was he was trying to use this uh, this
Speaker 1: old machine that they had at Bell Labs. It's it
Speaker 1: was a Digital Equipment Corporation also known as Deck PDP
Speaker 1: seven UM and Unix. You know, they put Unix on
Speaker 1: that machine, or that was the point of creating Unix,
Speaker 1: was to operate this machine, but also to operate others. UM.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't long after that after they were doing
Speaker 1: this that they got a PDP eleven computer. UM. And
Speaker 1: the nice thing about Unix was it was computer independent,
Speaker 1: so they would they would be able to use Unix
Speaker 1: on multiple different computers, not just that one particular machine. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know they were able to to migrate Unix and
Speaker 1: run it on that other machine and use the programming
Speaker 1: language C to write software for it. Yeah, this this
Speaker 1: was a fairly new idea. Unix was not the first
Speaker 1: operating system that could be used on different machines, but
Speaker 1: it was one of the first. And I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: didn't go interrupted, and I was gonna say if you'll remember,
Speaker 1: we are not long ago. A few weeks we did
Speaker 1: a podcast about the beginnings of the Internet and one
Speaker 1: of the first challenges and and and those guys were
Speaker 1: working on on these challenges about the same time as
Speaker 1: Richie and Thompson were working on They're trying to solve
Speaker 1: these problems. Um, they had multiple computers in different locations,
Speaker 1: and they all used a different operating system. So you know,
Speaker 1: these these computer pioneers were doing something very important. They've
Speaker 1: realized that this is just a pain in the neck,
Speaker 1: and you have to find ways to get computers on
Speaker 1: the same operating system, running the same programming language. Take
Speaker 1: talking to each other in the same protocol in order
Speaker 1: to get them to work more efficiently well. And also
Speaker 1: the idea behind this is that for programmers it makes
Speaker 1: things way easier because otherwise, if you're a programmer and
Speaker 1: you're going into programming, you had to learn how to
Speaker 1: navigate specific operating systems for specific machines, which meant that
Speaker 1: you might be an expert on two, maybe or three
Speaker 1: machines max. Two three different types machines, but then you
Speaker 1: get introduced to another one and the operating system might
Speaker 1: be completely foreign to you because each one had its own.
Speaker 1: The approach that that Richie and Thompson had meant that
Speaker 1: the 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 and for that is that at the time
Speaker 1: when this was going on, a T and T was
Speaker 1: a telephone monopoly in the United States, and as a
Speaker 1: telephone anyway essentially a monopoly. They don't have to be
Speaker 1: the only player to be a monopoly, they have to
Speaker 1: be the only mega major player, and they certainly were,
Speaker 1: and so they were essentially a monopoly in the United States.
Speaker 1: And because they were, they had to operate under what
Speaker 1: is 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 universities,
Speaker 1: which and they also offered up a license which allowed
Speaker 1: these these different institutions to take the operating system and
Speaker 1: tweak it to their own needs. So Unix ended up
Speaker 1: propagating across a wide array of educational organizations and other
Speaker 1: institutions and became a solid foundation for students who were
Speaker 1: interested in programming because now they suddenly had access to
Speaker 1: this operating system platform that they didn't have access to before.
Speaker 1: And it was free, so there was no cost to
Speaker 1: the students or to the universities, and it meant that
Speaker 1: the whole field of computer science accelerated exponentially because there
Speaker 1: was suddenly access to two very sophisticated tools that there
Speaker 1: wasn't before. So we started to see a lot more
Speaker 1: people going into programming. Eventually, this actually led to UH
Speaker 1: Richie writing a book, co writing a book, I should say,
Speaker 1: and that book is the C Programming Language. But it's
Speaker 1: frequently referred to as the K and R Book. And
Speaker 1: it's called K and R after the last names of
Speaker 1: the two authors, So Dennis Ritchie as the R, the
Speaker 1: K is Brian Carnigan and Uh. And so if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard anyone or if you are a programmer, you
Speaker 1: think of the K and R Book as being one
Speaker 1: of those sacred texts that that everyone values. If you've
Speaker 1: talked to a programmer and you've heard this phrase, that's
Speaker 1: what it refers to as the C programming Language. I remember,
Speaker 1: um Lennis tor Volts talked about the K in our
Speaker 1: book like being a big influence on him when he
Speaker 1: was getting into programming. And Uh it's widely praised as
Speaker 1: a very accessible book on the subject of programming, and
Speaker 1: part of that it's because the C programming language itself
Speaker 1: is very relatively simple. It's got a very simple grammar
Speaker 1: and syntax and is paired down to just the bare necessities.
Speaker 1: Not the song from the Jungle Book. I didn't sing it.
Speaker 1: It's going through my head already, but anyway, it's paired down,
Speaker 1: so it's very it's it's very spare. It's meant to
Speaker 1: be that way so that it doesn't take up a
Speaker 1: lot of base and everything runs really smoothly and quickly
Speaker 1: on a machine. We have a bit more we want
Speaker 1: to talk about, as far as Dennis Ritchie goes, and
Speaker 1: so we will do that as soon as we come
Speaker 1: back from this quake break. So. Uh. Interestingly enough, A
Speaker 1: T and T releases Unix out right. Well years later
Speaker 1: they were no longer held under the consent decree. Turns
Speaker 1: out A T T gut a little bit of a
Speaker 1: they had a little breakup with themselves. Breaking up is
Speaker 1: hard to do all over the place. Uh, and lots
Speaker 1: of other companies came out of this whole A T
Speaker 1: 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 language they tried to yeah, exactly. They
Speaker 1: tried to re establish their proprietary hold over Unix. As
Speaker 1: a result of that, it's sort of helped first of
Speaker 1: all unichs to being distributed throughout universities. That that kind
Speaker 1: of started that seed of an idea of open source,
Speaker 1: this idea of code that is created and then distributed
Speaker 1: freely and then people can actually manipulate that code under
Speaker 1: certain specific circumstances. And so that's kind of planted that seed. Well,
Speaker 1: once a T and T started try and grab that back,
Speaker 1: that seed really started to blossom. And uh and that's
Speaker 1: prob more or less what prompted Richard Stallman to create
Speaker 1: the CANOW project g NU and can news acronym stands
Speaker 1: for its recursive acronym and stands for News not Unix.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't it wasn't a a uh, it wasn't
Speaker 1: too dismiss what Richie and Thompson had done. It was
Speaker 1: more about the whole moment about the ownership. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the corporate side, not the programming side that was
Speaker 1: sort of that prompted that. Um but Unix has turned
Speaker 1: out to be a really versatile and uh important operating
Speaker 1: system and it it provides the kernel for a lot
Speaker 1: of or sometimes literally the kernel for a lot of
Speaker 1: other operating systems, including stuff that's found on web servers
Speaker 1: across the Internet. Lennox is not a direct derivative of Unix,
Speaker 1: but it is inspired, inspired by informed by Unix, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's very name, you can it's sort of
Speaker 1: an homage. Of course, it's a play on Linus Torvald's name,
Speaker 1: because Linus and Lenox. But if the X you can
Speaker 1: tell is yeah, yeah, son, because everyone always gets on
Speaker 1: me whenever I say that Lenox essentially comes from Unix,
Speaker 1: But I don't mean that Unix was manipulated to become
Speaker 1: Linux so much as Unix, like Lenus Torvald's used Unix
Speaker 1: as a blueprint for building what would become Lenox. It's
Speaker 1: a spiritual relative that's in a literal. But Unix also
Speaker 1: provides the foundation for other operating systems. It was what
Speaker 1: Windows was built on for ages. Uh. It is the
Speaker 1: foundation of mac OS ten and iOS. If you were
Speaker 1: to actually dive into the mac os ten operating system,
Speaker 1: you would find that it is based off the Berkeley
Speaker 1: distribution of Unix, which is also called b s D
Speaker 1: or point to um. So I mean it's everywhere and
Speaker 1: then not only that, but the C programming language ended
Speaker 1: up inspiring other computer scientists to develop programming languages that
Speaker 1: were kind of an evolution of C. Because ultimately there
Speaker 1: are other ways of programming computers. UH, but the the
Speaker 1: philosophy behind C programming pervades. A lot of those languages
Speaker 1: included object oriented languages like uh C plus plus or Java, UM, Python, Ruby.
Speaker 1: Those are sort of derivatives UM, and they're both of
Speaker 1: those are designed to be very simple to use as well,
Speaker 1: I think spiritually if you will again to use that UM.
Speaker 1: The ideas that Ritchie and and a lot of his
Speaker 1: UH colleagues, if you will, across different companies, UM. Basically
Speaker 1: 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 Ritchie,
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 the
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
Speaker 1: uh the functionality through the C programming language. And Richie
Speaker 1: has been recognized multiple times with awards and and various
Speaker 1: uh accolades. Um, I've got a list of them if
Speaker 1: you would like to hear some of them. Well, that's
Speaker 1: the funny thing is I was gonna say. You might
Speaker 1: wonder why if this is the first time you've heard
Speaker 1: of Dennis Richie, you might say, well, he's done a
Speaker 1: lot for computing. I mean, he's really influenced people all
Speaker 1: over the world. Why have we not really heard about him?
Speaker 1: And he's he is sort of he was sort of
Speaker 1: a private guy. He um very hard worker. He'd come
Speaker 1: in at noon, leave in the middle of the afternoon,
Speaker 1: then go home and work until three in the morning sometimes. Um.
Speaker 1: Not the kind of person that spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time 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
Speaker 1: three he received along with Thompson the Touring Award for
Speaker 1: their work with operating systems, so of course named after entering.
Speaker 1: We've we've done a full podcast about him as well.
Speaker 1: You should listen to that one. It's an interesting story.
Speaker 1: Um In. 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 A
Speaker 1: Y or I eh. 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 UH two Silicon Valley to check it out.
Speaker 1: Um in n. Richie and Thompson again, they received the
Speaker 1: National Medal of Technology from from Bill Clinton. UH In
Speaker 1: two thousand five, he received the Achievement Award from the
Speaker 1: Industrial Research Institute, and in eleven Richie and Thompson received
Speaker 1: the Japan Prize for Information and Communications. So he's been
Speaker 1: recognized officially from fous 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
Speaker 1: like it's not like they are thrust into the public
Speaker 1: eye like an Apple keynote always is. UM. But yes,
Speaker 1: it is very clear that Richie played a pivotal role
Speaker 1: really to the development of computer science in in our
Speaker 1: modern age, and that without his work it would be very,
Speaker 1: very different, and we might not even have things like
Speaker 1: the smartphones that we use today, at least not in
Speaker 1: the form factor that we're used to and the functionality
Speaker 1: that we're used to. It might you know, it's not
Speaker 1: to say that something else wouldn't have come along, but
Speaker 1: there's no way of knowing what that would have been.
Speaker 1: So UM, our hat is off to you, Mr Richie.
Speaker 1: Our world is better for you having worked in it.
Speaker 1: And so I'm glad that we took this time to
Speaker 1: really recognize him and and talk about his life and
Speaker 1: his work, especially to you guys out there who may
Speaker 1: have not been familiar with him. UM. And if you're
Speaker 1: interested in programming, if you want to get into it,
Speaker 1: and the book that he co wrote is considered one
Speaker 1: of the the texts that you have to read, and
Speaker 1: it's and every single programmer I've ever taught to has
Speaker 1: praised it for its readability, saying that it's actually for
Speaker 1: a book about programming languages, very easy to read. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that classic episode. It was great
Speaker 1: to focus on a specific person. We rarely did that
Speaker 1: back in the early days of tech Stuff. We would
Speaker 1: once in a while do a spotlight on a specific
Speaker 1: person as opposed to a technology or once in a
Speaker 1: while a company. But I do it much more frequently
Speaker 1: these days. So may be there's someone in technology you
Speaker 1: think I should focus on for a full episode. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions like that, you can pop on over
Speaker 1: to the email client of your choice and type in
Speaker 1: the two line text stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also pop on over to our website that's
Speaker 1: tech stuff podcast dot com. There you're going to find
Speaker 1: an archive of all of our previous episodes. In fact,
Speaker 1: you might want to do a search just to make
Speaker 1: sure I haven't already done an episode about the particular
Speaker 1: person you have in mind. And you can also find
Speaker 1: links to our presence on social media, so you can
Speaker 1: contact me through Facebook or through Twitter. And you also
Speaker 1: find a link to our online store, where every purchase
Speaker 1: you make goes to help the show, and we greatly
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is a production of I heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, this,
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