[clug] 'Wired' on Dennis Ritchie

[Alex Satrapa]

On 17/10/2011, at 15:16 , steve jenkin wrote:

> Finally, last but not least, that is why our patent system is broken:
> technology has done such an amazing job at hiding its complexity that
> the people regulating and running the patent system are barely even
> aware of the complexity of what they're regulating and running.

Not to mention that patents cover the "inspiration" part of invention.

Dennis and co. went through the "perspiration" part too: they went through B before they got to C. They invented other garbage before they invented Unix.

I still have a copy of "The C Programming Language" on my shelf. It's a great book, even though I only worked in C for a short time. Everything I do is in Perl, Python or Ruby these days: but where would they be without C or Unix?

"Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly."
  —Henry Spencer

Alex