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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

-Dennis Ritchie

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C Was Already Implemented

Dennis Ritchie

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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

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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.

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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.

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It Seems Certain That Much Of The Success Of Unix Follows From The Readability, Modifiability, And Portability Of Its Software.

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

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.

Any Editing, Software Work, And Mail Is Done In This Exported Plan 9

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Some Consider Unix To Be The Second Most Important Invention To Come Out Of At&t Bell Labs After The Transistor.

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 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.

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 Quirky, Flawed, And An Enormous Success.

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I Listen To Mostly-classical Music, But Mostly By Radio - I'm Not An Audiophile.

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Unix Has Retarded Os Research By 10 Years And Linux Has Retarded It By 20.

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Unix Is Basically A Simple Operating System, But You Have To Be A Genius To Understand The Simplicity.

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.

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The Number Of Unix Installations Has Grown To 10, With More Expected.

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I'm Still Uncertain About The Language Declaration Syntax.

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