"The UNIX System" from the AT&T Archives

Film (produced in 1982) includes Brian Kernighan demonstrating how to write a spell check command in shell, interviews with Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and much more.

Death of Two Titans: Jobs and Ritchie

The Mac Observer published last week:

U.S. President Barack Obama issued a statement on the passing of Steve Jobs Wednesday calling the Apple cofounder one of America’s greatest innovators. Mr. Jobs passed away sometime on Wednesday, an event that had lead to many luminaries offering statements and remembrances about the iconic executive. The president, an iPad user, also praised Mr. Jobs for having, “changed the way each of us sees the world.”

[Steve Jobs]

Steve Jobs was famous for the creation of Apple Computer with the Apple II and Macintosh, as well as popular consumer electronics like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

Electronista publishes today:

Just one week after the tech industry was hit with the news of Steve Jobs' death, computer scientist Dennis Ritchie​ has also passed. The unfortunate news was announced by friend and colleague Rob Pike​, who notes that Ritchie died at his home after a "long illness." The 70-year-old Harvard graduate and veteran of Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs​ was credited with authoring the C programming language.

Dennis Ritchie published the book "The C Programming Language" in 1978 with Brian Kernighan​, after the C Language was developed at Bell Labs. The language is often referred to as "K&R C". This language was also used in the development of the UNIX Operating System with Ken Thompson.


[President Clinton awarding National Medal of Technology in 1998 to Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson]

Nearly all modern operating systems are now based upon C. These three are the grandfathers of modern computers. Even Steve Job's Macintosh Operating System, MacOS X, is based on UNIX and C.


I could never give justice to the likes of Steve Jobs or Dennis Ritchie in this blog, but at least I can reference them. Unlike the license place, they "lived free and died - UNIX".

May God rest their souls, which longed for excellence and perfection.

In case you have not seen the article a trade journal - this is from Information Week:

Q&A: Ken Thompson, Creator Of Unix

Ken Thompson, creator of Unix speaks with Dr. Dobbs on a wide variety of topics.

By Andrew Binstock
June 27, 2011 12:00 AM

Unix's ubiquity was a surprise, says Thompson

The Japan Prize, one of the highest honors awarded for outstanding contribution to science and technology, was awarded jointly this year to Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for the creation of Unix.

The prize is normally given to the recipients at a lavish banquet in Tokyo attended by the emperor. However, due to the April earthquake and tsunami, the prizes this year were distributed at the honorees' place of work. Ken Thompson's ceremony was held at Google headquarters, where he currently works, and afterward he spoke with Dr. Dobb's editor in chief Andrew Binstock on a wide variety of topics. Their discussion ranged from the development of Unix, beginning in the late 1960s, to the collaboration with Ritchie, to Thompson's current project, the open source programming language Go, which is designed to get the most performance out of today's multicore and networked computers.

On Developing Unix

...

On The Go Language

...

On Collaborating With Dennis Ritchie

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[rest of article]