RIP Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C

[Mr. Analog]

RIP Dennis, you will be missed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

[Darren Dirt]

a reminder that this industry has been around for quite a while.


In "Dreaming With Code" I learned that Knuth has been writing a tome for decades ("The Art Of Programming") ... I hope he gets all the "volumes" finished soon as he is in his 70s as well... apparently TAOP is concept-filled rather than syntax-filled (i.e. helps one to become a self-directed software developer, not a [Java/.net/PHP/languageflavorofthemonth] programmer)

[Mr. Analog]

Books certainly on my "to read" list (have been for a while.... hmmmm).

It's sad to see such legendary people pass on, especially at such a young age.

[Darren Dirt]

from Twitter @maddoghall(Jon "maddog" Hall )

For those that want a bit more insight into Dennis Ritchie, I have written a short blog about him ow.ly/1yzbsY ( http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog/RIP-Dennis )

[Darren Dirt]

In "Dreaming With Code"...

On the subject of "History of Computing" tomes that apparently all of us involved in design/development "should" eventually read...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib_/_Dream_Machines
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Dream-Machines-Theodor-Nelson/dp/0893470023

imo Steve Jobs was a consumer electronics business visionary, but Theodor Nelson was a visonary on a much larger scale.

"EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no "subjects" at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged -- people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't."
^ Deep Thoughts.

Too bad that Nelson's vision of "Xanadu" got completely diluted, just as apparently Ritchie's vision of "object oriented programming" was (I remember hearing that he [or was it some other veteran/giant of the industry?] had ideas for OOP far more profound than what ended up as C++, weak sauce compared to what he envisioned).