Dennis Ritchie Quotes

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.

Unix has retarded OS research by 10 years and linux has retarded it by 20.

C was already implemented on several quite different machines and OSs, Unix was already being distributed on the PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system was new

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around.

For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

... with proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed.

I'm not a person who particularly had heros when growing up.

Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX.

I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate

I'm just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.

The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.

Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks.

I'm still uncertain about the language declaration syntax.

At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they're designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler

A program designed for inputs from people is usually stressed beyond breaking point by computer-generated inputs.

UNIX is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius (or at any rate, a programmer) to understand and appreciate its simplicity.

The kind of programming that C provides will probably remain similar absolutely or slowly decline in usage, but relatively, JavaScript or its variants, or XML, will continue to become more central.

Some consider UNIX to be the second most important invention to come out of AT&T Bell Labs after the transistor.

From an operating system research point of view, Unix is if not dead certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.

Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson.

Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.

I listen to mostly-classical music, but mostly by radio - I'm not an audiophile.

I've done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time.

When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd.

C is peculiar in a lot of ways, but it, like many other successful things, has a certain unity of approach that stems from development in a small group.

Steve Jobs has said that Xwindows is brain-damamged and will disappear in two years. He got it half-right.

I fix things now and then, more often tweak HTML and make scripts to do things.

Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9

Twenty percent of all input forms filled out by people contain bad data.

It seems certain that much of the success of Unix follows from the readability, modifiability, and portability of its software.

One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.

Oh, I've seen copies [of Linux Journal] around the terminal room at The Labs.

A new release of Plan 9 happened in June, and at about the same time a new release of the Inferno system, which began here, was announced by Vita Nuova.

The notion of a record is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column card.

My work was fairly theoretical. It was in recursive function theory. And in particular, hierarchies of functions in terms of computational complexity. I got involved in real computers and programming mainly by being - well, I was interested even as I came to graduate school.

It's true that compared with the scene when Unix started, today the ecological niches are fairly full, and fresh new OS ideas are harder to come by, or at least to propagate.

I've done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time. I'm a home-body and get fatigued by it fairly soon, but enjoy thinking back on experiences when I've returned and then often wish I'd arranged a longer stay in the somewhat exotic place.

C is declining somewhat in usage compared to C++, and maybe Java, but perhaps even more compared to higher-level scripting languages. It's still fairly strong for the basic system-type things.

The True-GNU philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well as providing real software.

For books, I don't read much fiction, but like travel essays and good pop-science.