Top 25 Dennis Ritchie Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.

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.

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.

At MIT, mostly what I did was documentation. I sort of read things. Wrote some descriptions of various aspects of the file system. Did not really do very much programming at all. At least on Multics.

At MIT, mostly what I did was documentation. I sort of read things. Wrote some descriptions of various aspects of the file system. Did not really do very much programming at all. At least on Multics.

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

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

At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas?

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