Techstuff Classic: Spotlight on Dennis Ritchie

As it turns out, they were many and they were significant. So Chris Ballette and I sit down and talk about this influential technologist. Enjoy. Jonathan and I were talking about topics to record and we thought, you know, we should, we should um talk about one of the most famous or non famous famous people there are in tech. Yeah, this is a guy who was incredibly influential in technology. In fact, without him, our technological landscape would be totally

different as far as computer science goes. And this is this is, of course, the the late great Dennis Ritchie Dennis McAllister Ritchie UH and or d M R as he was sometimes known UH. Tragically, Dennis Ritchie passed away last year and In fact, his his body was discovered a week after Steve Jobs passed away, and so his death was somewhat eclipsed by Steve Jobs's death because Steve Jobs had a real cult of personality around him for

various reasons. Right, he sort of embodied personified, if you will, the corporation of Apple, and so very much was identified with that brand. Now, Dennis Ritchie, his contributions, you could argue, went far beyond Steve Jobs as contributions. In fact, a lot of programmers out there were very much upset that his passing did not receive the same sort of coverage

that Steve Jobs did. But Steve Jobs was a much more public figure, and um it was was sort of a marketing genius as well, not sort of, he was a marketing genius and whereas Dennis Richie was sort of an architect of of what computers do today, and and it was a different two different types of people. Yeah, And doing some research on on Dennis Ritchie, I feel like that's probably the way he preferred things. He wasn't really the kind of of public personality type. He wasn't

necessarily looking for, uh, the public plaudits. Um, Although I think he probably enjoyed being appreciated by by others. UM. And of course, really Steve Jobs and Apple wouldn't be where they, you know, where they were at the time of Steve's passing last year, UM without the efforts Dennis Richie and many others who worked with him. Very true, very true. And as you say, Dennis Ritchie was a very private man, so was Steve Jobs. But Steve Jobs would also put himself out in front of crowds in

order to talk about products. That's not what Dennis Richie did, although he did write one of the most famous books and programming, which we will get into. So Steve had a public face that's right, very very well put. And I have to say that before I really dive into here, I found one article in particular incredibly informative and touching

really about Dennis Richie. And there are there are a lot of articles out there that have been written since his passing, But the one in particular that I want to mention because a lot of my information came from this article was written by Cade Mets of Wired and it's called Dennis Ritchie the Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On, and it's an excellent read. So I highly recommend you go to Wired and check that out before before you turn this podcast off, write that down because it's a

really good article. Yeah. I think that. Um, a lot of the articles that came out immediately following Dennis Ritchie's passing had sort of a Steve jobs connection simply because they passed at that time there a week of each other. Yeah, yeah, there there There wasn't a connection connection like these guys hung out all the time. It wasn't like it wasn't like Jobs was and Ritchie all right, yeah, I think

you come back at the local coffee shop. No, but I think there there's a tie in simply because uh those two events were uh so close together. But um, yeah, let's let's talk about about Dennis here. He was born September nine in uh in New York, Bronxville, New York, yep, yep. And he was and he passed away in New Jersey and Berkeley Heights on October and October. Yeah, we don't know exactly when because his body was found tragically, so

we don't know exactly the day. His father was Alistair E. Ritchie, who was a scientist and an authority on switching circuit theory, and he was an employee with Bell Laboratories or laboratories. Yes, it's it's funny to me going going towards the traditional there. His father was Alistair and his middle name was mac Alistair, which son of Alistair. Very well done. I like that, yes, um. And it was one of those just a little trivia type facts that you pick up when you're when you're

researching someone like that. But nicely done, guys. He he was an apt student and he attended Harvard University. He graduated with degrees in physics and applied mathematics. And then when he decided to go into graduate school, also at Harvard, he began to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology m i T. And he worked in their computer center.

And as he worked in the computer center, he became so interested in computer science he decided that was what he wanted to focus in as opposed to pure mathematics, although the two two fields have a lot in common

one another. And this is this is another illustration of how much, how much of an effect that these computer pioneers had um when he was going when he had made that decision he wanted to get into computer science It wasn't like he said, Oh, I'm going to go to UH, to Harvard or m I team get my computer science degree. There wasn't a computer science degree at that time. UM, it's thanks to people like these that

we have such a strong computer science field. And in fact, the work they did end up being the syllabus for for for those computer science degrees. I mean, like his his work on the on programming is one of the fundamental UH foundation blocks for learning about programming and computer science today. So while he uh is going through this graduate work, he ends up getting a PhD from Harvard.

His dissertation was called program Structure and Computational Complexity, which was something he really did excel at that became a focus of his. While he was there working through this, he got a a request, a recruitment request from Sandia National Laboratories. And Sandia National Laboratories was a weapons research and testing company, and so they were offering him bookoo's

of cash to be part of their team. But this was in the nineteen sixties and Richie kind of had this philosophy that perhaps a weapons testing facility might not be the place he would want to end up in, and so he turned it down, although we we just mentioned Sandy National Laboratories a short time ago on a

podcast about supercomputers. So instead he went and joined a different lab, Bell Labs, same place as Dad had worked, and he joined in nineteen sixty seven, and uh he was first put on a project where he was going to be working with a team from m I T along with a fellow named Ken Thompson. Now that's a very important name as well. Thompson and Ritchie together have done a lot of work and laid that groundwork on

computer science. They were originally working with his team from m I T. Thompson, by the way, also worked for Bell Labs. They were working with his team from m I T to build a new operating system called Multics m U L T I c S. However, halfway through the project, funding gets pulled it. It just decided the project wasn't moving fast enough or it wasn't going to

budget at any rate. For some reason or another, the project was was trashed and Richie and Thompson were a little put off by this because they wanted to build an operating system that would support their programming efforts across multiple platform forms and that was a real problem because back in these days, in the sixties, a lot of these computers had proprietary operating systems that worked only upon that computer, So the machine and the operating system were

married together. You didn't find the same operating system across multiple types of machines, kind of the way you could argue Apple works, you know, because the Apple OS and the hardware are so closely aligned. Right right. Um, Now, did you mention who had been funding Multics? I did not. That would be the Advanced Research Projects Agency or a Gosh that names sounds familiar. So since since poltics gets pulled, they decided they wanted to continue and try and build

their own operating system. Now there's something else I wanted to mention about multics though, was it was a time sharing system which means that you go and hang out there and have a nice vacation. No, it means that you have multiple terminals that hook up to us centralized computer and that as you are working on stuff, you get time allotted to you to access the computer's processing power. Yeah, so when you're working on it, that means nobody else

is well. Although they way these time sharing systems worked is that it would switch back and forth so quickly as to seem like everyone's working simultaneously. But in truth, if you were to really divide up the time, very specific moments would be allocated to each user depending on how many users there are for that particular system. Yeah,

but it was it was single tasking. Um. And something else to note too is that this was in a time when UM, the programmer would need to create a series of punched cards to to uh to put this into the machine. So you're programming is done on punched cards, and then you give it to someone to compile for you and put into the machine. So once you're done writing the program, you hand off the deck of cards

and go work on something else. And then the through the compiling process, you find out whether or not your program works exactly. So the so the programmer Dennis Ritchie realized that there are important things going on here. He wanted to change. He wanted to have more of an impact. He wanted to feel like he was more engaged with the process. He also felt like, UM, he wanted to work with other people collaboratively on the computer system. UM

and uh. You know, these were things that influenced his and and Ken Thompson's decision making where they wanted to do with this next operating system. So Thompson starts to work on this, and he starts to build this operating system using assembly language. But here's the problem is simply language just did not give the full amount of control that they needed to build out an operating system that could manage all the data across all the different parts

of this operating system. Because you gotta remember, the operating system handles data that's coming from user input, it's handling data from the file system, from from any storage that is connected to this computer. Uh, it has to handle the data that comes out of the processing after the

CPUs processed it. There's a lot of different moving pieces here, well virtually moving pieces or pieces that are virtual anyway, there are a lot of pieces and so and so the problem is that the assembly language was not sophisticated enough to do this in an elegant way. So if the assembly language isn't doing it, what's your solution. Well, if you're Dennis Ritchie, your solution is build a new

programming language. Yeah, the the assembly language was so close to the kernel, to the operating system that or to the UM I'm sorry to the hardware that it just made life really difficult. And so he what his solution didn't take you much farther away, but it was far enough away that it made a big difference in the way you would write at the time that he developed, and the language he developed was the C programming language. At the time that developed that, that was considered a

high level programming language. Today we would not say that. We would say it's a much lower level because there are higher level programming languages that have been developed since then. But at the time it was considered a high level programming language, meaning that it was a further step out from the physical layer of the computer. And it's kind of interesting, like first, before he did that, they started to think about using four trand to try and create

the Unix operating system by the way, Unix. By the way, it was originally spelled un I c S, but because we pronounced that Unix, they just replaced the CS with an X eventually. Uh so that's why it's spelled you in I x UM anyway, And it was a playoff the Multics name. That was what they were working on before. So they tried to use four trend well, four tran was as a programming language that was really really well suited for scientific applications. Uh, and it was too limited

for them, so they abandoned using for trend. There were few other options, but they were again meant for very specific applications, and they wanted something more general. So what what Richie did was he took, uh, he looked at a programming language that Thompson had developed called the B programming language B as in boy h, which depending upon which theory you're reading, could have been named after his

wife or a different programming language. Anyway, Richie took that and then he thought he got stung on the day that he uh, there you could have been who knows. I'll get Thompson on the phone. We'll have a chat. Chris and I have a lot more to say about

Dennis Ritchie, but first let's take a quick break. So Richie he ended up taking looking at the B programming language, and then he developed his own programming language called C. And again, the only reason that he built the C programming language, or at least the original intent, was just so they could build Unix. And it's kind of important to realize that because I think based upon everything I've read, and granted this is all from secondhand information. It wasn't

something that Dennis Richie wrote himself. It feels like he never knew how extensive this language would go throughout the computer field. He was doing it for a very practical purpose. He needed a different language in order to build the operating system they wanted to have. So he never really realized at the time that C programming language was going to become such a huge, uh, fundamental part of computer science. If he had, maybe he would have felt the pressure

a bit more. Well, actually, in a way, he didn't need to feel as pressured. UM. It's good baby that he that he was sort of divorced from that. UM. He was he was trying to use this uh, this old machine that they had at Bell Labs. It's it was a Digital Equipment Corporation also known as Deck PDP seven UM and Unix. You know, they put Unix on that machine, or that was the point of creating Unix,

was to operate this machine, but also to operate others. UM. And it wasn't long after that after they were doing this that they got a PDP eleven computer. UM. And the nice thing about Unix was it was computer independent, so they would they would be able to use Unix on multiple different computers, not just that one particular machine. So, um, you know they were able to to migrate Unix and run it on that other machine and use the programming language C to write software for it. Yeah, this this

was a fairly new idea. Unix was not the first operating system that could be used on different machines, but it was one of the first. And I'm sorry I didn't go interrupted, and I was gonna say if you'll remember, we are not long ago. A few weeks we did a podcast about the beginnings of the Internet and one of the first challenges and and and those guys were working on on these challenges about the same time as Richie and Thompson were working on They're trying to solve

these problems. Um, they had multiple computers in different locations, and they all used a different operating system. So you know, these these computer pioneers were doing something very important. They've realized that this is just a pain in the neck, and you have to find ways to get computers on the same operating system, running the same programming language. Take talking to each other in the same protocol in order

to get them to work more efficiently well. And also the idea behind this is that for programmers it makes things way easier because otherwise, if you're a programmer and you're going into programming, you had to learn how to navigate specific operating systems for specific machines, which meant that you might be an expert on two, maybe or three

machines max. Two three different types machines, but then you get introduced to another one and the operating system might be completely foreign to you because each one had its own. The approach that that Richie and Thompson had meant that the same operating system could be found across multiple different machines. You could just learn that one, and once you've learned that one, you're good to go. You can program for all sorts of machines, which was a revolutionary development in

computer science. You know, it's easy for us to forget that now because we're so used to that world, even though in some ways the old world is kind of coming back with various manufacturers making very proprietary approaches to things so that you can't, you know, the methodology used to work on one set of devices doesn't work on

another set. We're starting to see that again now, but for a long time, it was this philosophy of let's develop something that's going to work across the entire landscape of computers, so that way, uh, you know, people can really concentrate on mastering programming and not have to worry about mastering it for just one set of type of computational device, whether it's a computer or handheld device, whatever

it is. So that's sort of the development of Unix, and uh it got it's hard to explain the impact of this operating system. Part of the reason it had such a huge impact had to do with the constraints that a T and T was under because you had, you know, a T and T there the the head of what Bell Labs was, parent company of Bell Labs. Uh. They the reason why Unix. One of the reasons why Unix worked so well is that it ended up being

distributed across various research facilities and universities. And the reason why it was distributed for free is because a T and T legally could not sell this operating system. And the reason and for that is that at the time when this was going on, a T and T was a telephone monopoly in the United States, and as a

telephone anyway essentially a monopoly. They don't have to be the only player to be a monopoly, they have to be the only mega major player, and they certainly were, and so they were essentially a monopoly in the United States. And because they were, they had to operate under what is called a consent decree, and that consent decree meant that they could not branch into another industry like computers, because they already held a monopoly over another industry, so

they could not by law sell this operating system. So instead they distributed it freely to these research facilities and universities, which and they also offered up a license which allowed these these different institutions to take the operating system and

tweak it to their own needs. So Unix ended up propagating across a wide array of educational organizations and other institutions and became a solid foundation for students who were interested in programming because now they suddenly had access to this operating system platform that they didn't have access to before.

And it was free, so there was no cost to the students or to the universities, and it meant that the whole field of computer science accelerated exponentially because there was suddenly access to two very sophisticated tools that there wasn't before. So we started to see a lot more people going into programming. Eventually, this actually led to UH Richie writing a book, co writing a book, I should say, and that book is the C Programming Language. But it's

frequently referred to as the K and R Book. And it's called K and R after the last names of the two authors, So Dennis Ritchie as the R, the K is Brian Carnigan and Uh. And so if you've ever heard anyone or if you are a programmer, you think of the K and R Book as being one of those sacred texts that that everyone values. If you've talked to a programmer and you've heard this phrase, that's

what it refers to as the C programming Language. I remember, um Lennis tor Volts talked about the K in our book like being a big influence on him when he was getting into programming. And Uh it's widely praised as a very accessible book on the subject of programming, and part of that it's because the C programming language itself is very relatively simple. It's got a very simple grammar and syntax and is paired down to just the bare necessities.

Not the song from the Jungle Book. I didn't sing it. It's going through my head already, but anyway, it's paired down, so it's very it's it's very spare. It's meant to be that way so that it doesn't take up a lot of base and everything runs really smoothly and quickly on a machine. We have a bit more we want to talk about, as far as Dennis Ritchie goes, and so we will do that as soon as we come back from this quake break. So. Uh. Interestingly enough, A

T and T releases Unix out right. Well years later they were no longer held under the consent decree. Turns out A T T gut a little bit of a they had a little breakup with themselves. Breaking up is hard to do all over the place. Uh, and lots of other companies came out of this whole A T and T thing. Well, once that happened, they said, hey, you know what, we want Unix again. So they started to try and language they tried to yeah, exactly. They

tried to re establish their proprietary hold over Unix. As a result of that, it's sort of helped first of all unichs to being distributed throughout universities. That that kind of started that seed of an idea of open source, this idea of code that is created and then distributed freely and then people can actually manipulate that code under certain specific circumstances. And so that's kind of planted that seed. Well, once a T and T started try and grab that back,

that seed really started to blossom. And uh and that's prob more or less what prompted Richard Stallman to create the CANOW project g NU and can news acronym stands for its recursive acronym and stands for News not Unix. And it wasn't it wasn't a a uh, it wasn't too dismiss what Richie and Thompson had done. It was more about the whole moment about the ownership. Yeah, it was the corporate side, not the programming side that was

sort of that prompted that. Um but Unix has turned out to be a really versatile and uh important operating system and it it provides the kernel for a lot of or sometimes literally the kernel for a lot of other operating systems, including stuff that's found on web servers across the Internet. Lennox is not a direct derivative of Unix, but it is inspired, inspired by informed by Unix, and it's and it's very name, you can it's sort of an homage. Of course, it's a play on Linus Torvald's name,

because Linus and Lenox. But if the X you can tell is yeah, yeah, son, because everyone always gets on me whenever I say that Lenox essentially comes from Unix, But I don't mean that Unix was manipulated to become Linux so much as Unix, like Lenus Torvald's used Unix as a blueprint for building what would become Lenox. It's a spiritual relative that's in a literal. But Unix also provides the foundation for other operating systems. It was what Windows was built on for ages. Uh. It is the

foundation of mac OS ten and iOS. If you were to actually dive into the mac os ten operating system, you would find that it is based off the Berkeley distribution of Unix, which is also called b s D or point to um. So I mean it's everywhere and then not only that, but the C programming language ended up inspiring other computer scientists to develop programming languages that were kind of an evolution of C. Because ultimately there are other ways of programming computers. UH, but the the

philosophy behind C programming pervades. A lot of those languages included object oriented languages like uh C plus plus or Java, UM, Python, Ruby. Those are sort of derivatives UM, and they're both of those are designed to be very simple to use as well, I think spiritually if you will again to use that UM. The ideas that Ritchie and and a lot of his

UH colleagues, if you will, across different companies, UM. Basically a lot of the ideas that they came up with, things that they said, you know, what computing should be like this, UM, you know, sort of unspoken tenants. Uh, they kind of stuck around. I think people have gone, you know what, these guys had something, and uh, you know, they've inspired a lot of people, especially people like Dennis Ritchie, have inspired people to to emulate those and improve upon

that work. UM. And a lot of the hardware that we see out there is built upon or with the C programming language. So that's the layer that exists on top of the actual physical hardware's you know, they've created uh the functionality through the C programming language. And Richie has been recognized multiple times with awards and and various uh accolades. Um, I've got a list of them if you would like to hear some of them. Well, that's

the funny thing is I was gonna say. You might wonder why if this is the first time you've heard of Dennis Richie, you might say, well, he's done a lot for computing. I mean, he's really influenced people all over the world. Why have we not really heard about him? And he's he is sort of he was sort of a private guy. He um very hard worker. He'd come in at noon, leave in the middle of the afternoon,

then go home and work until three in the morning sometimes. Um. Not the kind of person that spent a lot of time on a road show, appearing in the media, you know, to show off what he'd done. He wanted to improve on what he'd done and just kept working hard. But they did. He was recognized you as you say, by by many people and got some very prestigious awards. In three he received along with Thompson the Touring Award for their work with operating systems, so of course named after entering.

We've we've done a full podcast about him as well. You should listen to that one. It's an interesting story. Um In. He received the Richard W. Hemming Medal along with Thompson from my favorite organization in the world, just for the way I get to say it's acronym A Y or I eh. I never get tired of that. I know all of you do. In. Richie and Thompson were made fellows of the Computer History Museum, which I still want to go to. I have yet to make it out to UH two Silicon Valley to check it out.

Um in n. Richie and Thompson again, they received the National Medal of Technology from from Bill Clinton. UH In two thousand five, he received the Achievement Award from the Industrial Research Institute, and in eleven Richie and Thompson received

the Japan Prize for Information and Communications. So he's been recognized officially from fous types of organizations multiple times, although of course you could argue that these organizations are really only famous within the niche of computer programmers, which I think is fairly That's that's fair to say. It's not like it's not like they are thrust into the public

eye like an Apple keynote always is. UM. But yes, it is very clear that Richie played a pivotal role really to the development of computer science in in our modern age, and that without his work it would be very, very different, and we might not even have things like the smartphones that we use today, at least not in the form factor that we're used to and the functionality

that we're used to. It might you know, it's not to say that something else wouldn't have come along, but there's no way of knowing what that would have been. So UM, our hat is off to you, Mr Richie. Our world is better for you having worked in it. And so I'm glad that we took this time to really recognize him and and talk about his life and his work, especially to you guys out there who may

have not been familiar with him. UM. And if you're interested in programming, if you want to get into it, and the book that he co wrote is considered one of the the texts that you have to read, and it's and every single programmer I've ever taught to has praised it for its readability, saying that it's actually for a book about programming languages, very easy to read. Well, guys, I hope you enjoyed that classic episode. It was great to focus on a specific person. We rarely did that

back in the early days of tech Stuff. We would once in a while do a spotlight on a specific person as opposed to a technology or once in a while a company. But I do it much more frequently these days. So may be there's someone in technology you think I should focus on for a full episode. If you have suggestions like that, you can pop on over to the email client of your choice and type in the two line text stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also pop on over to our website that's

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