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whooleytoo

macrumors 604
Aug 2, 2002
6,607
716
Cork, Ireland.
It's funny that just about every new language out there seems to be based upon C. One way or another, we all owe a lot to him. I'd guess he - and a lot of people of his ilk - will never get the credit they deserve. Englebart, Berners Lee etc. for how they've contributed to our lives and how we interact and work.
 

KingCrimson

macrumors 65816
Mar 12, 2011
1,066
0
It's funny that just about every new language out there seems to be based upon C. One way or another, we all owe a lot to him. I'd guess he - and a lot of people of his ilk - will never get the credit they deserve. Englebart, Berners Lee etc. for how they've contributed to our lives and how we interact and work.

I agree, C is the perfect language. It's the one I studied growing up, then C++, Pascal and now C# for the last 10 years. I loved the C syntax then and now. But I don't like Objective-C which is a bastardized thing.
 

MorphingDragon

macrumors 603
Mar 27, 2009
5,160
6
The World Inbetween
But I don't like Objective-C which is a bastardized thing.

Careful, you're giving me a reason to argue. You wont like KnightWRX when I argue. :D

I consider C++ to be the bastardized language, following neither of its supposed paradigms properly. Objective-C has a polish that's hard to describe.

C is interesting to say the least. It got nearly everything right for a procedural programming language, sans proper string manipulation libraries.
 

SeanMcg

macrumors 6502
Jun 1, 2004
333
1
Ritchie and his fellow scientist Kernighan are so famous among educated programmers, that you only need their initials to refer to them:

"K&R" by itself refers to "The C Programming Language" book. As in, "Give back my copy of K&R, please!"
...

This thread made me realize that I have a never-used-since-college copy of The C Programming Language - Second Edition Copyright © 1988,1978 on my shelf.

I love this from the Publication Data page in the front, simply for the nostalgia factor:

This book was typeset (pic|tbl|eqn|troff -ms) in Times Roman and Courier by the authors, using an Autologic APS-5 phototypesetter and a DEC VAX 8550 running the 9th Edition of the UNIX® operating system
 

KingCrimson

macrumors 65816
Mar 12, 2011
1,066
0
I initially studied C from those Osborne books in the 80s. Loved pointer arithmetic, not anymore. Too busy making useful apps and stuff to worry about [autorelease] crap.
 

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,257
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
I don't know how to code in C, but I do know how to code in it's next step: C++

Code:
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main(){

cout << "Goodbye World" << endl;

return 0;
}

Thank you Mr. Ritchie.
 

Padaung

macrumors 6502
Jan 22, 2007
470
104
UK
Ritchie and his fellow scientist Kernighan are so famous among educated programmers, that you only need their initials to refer to them:

"K&R" by itself refers to "The C Programming Language" book. As in, "Give back my copy of K&R, please!"

"K&R Indent" refers to the book's code style.

"K&R C" refers to Ritchie's original C language dialect.

--

Almost every system in our daily lives, from traffic lights to car computers to browsers to multitasking, relies on what they invented.

Not forgetting about 60% of the servers in the world that help drive the world wide web. And that little NAS box many of us have in our homes/small businesses. And supercomputers. What he created has certainly affected all our lives indirectly in a very big way. He didn't help create nice shiny mobile phones and pretty laptops though, so then again he can't be that important :rolleyes:

RIP
 

mastermix

macrumors member
Jun 24, 2003
44
5
Asbury Park, NJ
Wow, I just glanced at the C Programming Language book on my shelf last night... the first edition no less. Got my first taste of C as part of a teen science program at Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ in the late 70's.

Dennis Ritchie, I thank you for the foundation you helped to create!
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,552
43,528
Not really. My first language was assembler, so I'm Ok with procedural stuff (and I don't program much these days anyway).

Anyhow, you can program kind of OO style in C... slap some pointers to functions in your structs and away you go! :)

same here, my first language was assembler as well. First MASM from microsoft, then for the PDP11 (an old dec mini-computer) :) Ahh the old days
 

firestarter

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2002
5,506
227
Green and pleasant land
same here, my first language was assembler as well. First MASM from microsoft, then for the PDP11 (an old dec mini-computer) :) Ahh the old days

Kids these days don't know how good they have it!

Although I do find the enormous libraries that languages like Java has pretty dull. It was much more fun writing directly to output devices and the screen.

Taught myself 6502 assembler on the Acorn Electron when I was a kid. I'm sure I can still remember the 13 addressing modes.
 

Doctor Q

Administrator
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
39,828
7,620
Los Angeles
Dennis Ritchie plays a prank on his boss, Nobel prize winner Arno Penzias, with help from Penn and Teller.

 

qtx43

macrumors 6502a
Aug 4, 2007
659
16
With apologies to The C Programming Language said:
17. Anachronisms
Since [humans are] an evolving [race], certain [failing] constructions may be found in older [gentlemen]. Although most versions of the [family] support such anachronisms, ultimately they will disappear, leaving only [memories and their work] behind.
...
 

Doctor Q

Administrator
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
39,828
7,620
Los Angeles
John McCarthy died October 23

We lost another computing pioneer: John McCarthy, who developing the LISP programming language, did research on human intelligence and artificial intelligence, and won multiple prizes including the National Medal of Science.

See MacRumors thread.
 
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