A *REAL* Icon Passes
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2011-10-13 11:43
by Karl Denninger
in Editorial
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A *REAL* Icon Passes
 

Everyone fawned when Steve Jobs passed.

They were -- and are -- fools.

Steve Jobs?  Oh sure, he "gave you what you wanted."  But he did it, and turned Apple into a household name with massive profits, by exploiting child and near-slave labor to the point that their contract factories in China have had to put nets up so you can't commit suicide by jumping off the buildings!

This is something we should applaud?

Well the fanboi's sure did last week.

Today?  Where are the real accolades?

We're getting reports today that Dennis Ritchie, the man who created the C programming language and spearheaded the development of Unix, has died at the age of 70. The sad news was first reported by Rob Pike, a Google engineer and former colleague of Ritchie's, who confirmed via Google+ that the computer scientist passed away over the weekend, after a long battle with an unspecified illness.

Dennis was an actual visionary who created something real.  He's the reason you have a iFeminineProduct.  He's the reason Tickerforum, The Market Ticker and virtually every web site on the planet exists. 

Dennis was the father of the "C" Language and one of the prime developers (the other two of note being Brian Kernighan and Ken Thompson) of the Unix operating system,without which none of these things you claim to be so enamored with - including Apple's products - would be with us today.

Dennis didn't work for a business that employs slave labor and exploits kids in third-world ****holes cranking out plastic crap they then sell at 70% operating margins by creating a "buzz" that is 180 degrees out of phase with the reality of their wage and environmental arbitrage.  He instead worked for an organization that was dedicated to and practiced basic research - Bell Labs.

"C" is an elegant language that has the power of assembler with both the readability and usability of a high-level language.  That power means it can be abused and often is, and that in turn has led to the rise of "highly structured" languages such as "C++" and similar (note the root of C++, however), albeit at what I would argue is the cost of significant bloat.

The elegance of "C" cannot be overstated; the entire Unix operating system is written in "C", making it an operating system and development environment that is self-referential - that is, it can and does compile itself!

I have personally written literal millions of lines of "C" code in my professional life, both for myself and others.  As just one example the software this blog and Tickerforum runs on, akcs-www, is written entirely in the "C" programming language.

Dennis was a man who I never had the pleasure of meeting personally, but I along with millions of others have used the fruits of his labors for decades -- literal decades.  The mark he left on the computing industry and the importance of his contribution to same is without parallel; literally everything we currently enjoy about The Web and all the companies surrounding it, past and present including my former MCSNet, would not have come into existence without what he, along with a handful of others, developed.

This is a man who truly deserves accolades and remembrances.  He was not a marketer nor did he create a "consumer powerhouse" built upon arbitraging labor across international boundaries.  Instead he labored in the furtherance of what made America great: He actually invented something that has gone on to be the enabling technology behind literally every bit of the so-called "Internet revolution."

That's what America used to be all about.  It isn't any more, but it once was.  The electric light, the telephone, the transistor (incidentally also developed at Bell Labs) and more all were ultimate products of this sort of research.

Instead of celebrating the life of men like Dennis who truly made a difference, we now laud those who manage to arbitrage someone else's misery into billions of dollars of personal profit.  There is nothing special about the latter; throughout history many men and women have found a way to get rich through various forms of arbitrage, but in essentially all cases someone else -- and often lots of "someone else's" -- lose at least as much as they gain.

Dennis, and those like him, are a different matter.  Oh sure, some like Edison had commercial desires behind their work, but there's nothing wrong with that standing alone.  But there's a huge difference between marketing coupled with arbitrage and invention.

One is the act of exploitation, the other the act of creation.  They could not be more different in character or lasting impact on society as a whole.  Dennis, unlike Jobs, is an example of the latter and it is entirely fair to make the claim that without his contribution you wouldn't be reading this column, ordering from Amazon or, for that matter, using your favorite iFeminineProduct.

May Dennis, an actual inventor and prime demonstration of both human innovation and progress, unlike so many others that our society place on a pedestal and fawn over like some latter-day Jesus, rest in peace.

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Asimov
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Excellent.

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If you trade based on what other people say, you will lose money. Especially what I say. I won't be held responsible. Festina lente.
Blacknapkins
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Great Post.

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Young new trader. Take anything I say with a grain of salt, and please don't hesitate to correct me. I'm here to learn, and hopefully make some money. :D
Joshua_d
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"Dennis didn't work for a business that employs slave labor and exploits kids in third-world ****holes cranking out plastic crap they then sell at 70% operating margins by creating a "buzz" that is 180 degrees out of phase with the reality of their wage and environmental arbitrage. He instead worked for an organization that was dedicated to and practiced basic research - Bell Labs."

Ouuuuucccchhhhh! I can always count on you Karl for a good smack down.
Ssaini
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So SAD. I started my computing career with C programming but moved on to Databases.

Still remember the days when I used to sit with the book "The C Programming Language" written by Brian & Dennis. It was a kind of craze back in my class in INDIA to read this book.

Hatt's off to Karl as usual for excellent article.
Trades50
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Later on he created a network operating system called Inferno. Sad to hear of his passing.

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When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. - Thomas Jefferson
Bigsapper
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Wow. RIP man. Thanks for what you did.

Still have my K&R C Programming Language.

Plstffls
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People can hold their ipods, iphones, ipods in their own hands. So people associate these i-products with Steve Jobs.
However they can't feel/touch the C-code inside these products.
Only software engineers do. But then again, how many software engineers do know Dennis Ritchie?

Bell Labs indeed was by far the best lab in the world.
Reddweb
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i dont think we can compare steve jobs with dennis, in any context whatsoever.

What steve did basically changed/touched countless non-techie lives. He single-handedly ushered in new innovation-competition race of music, phone, computer, and now tablets. Kind of like second coming of PC revolution.

What dennis did is akin to scientists. Who gets more popularism, Inventor of first IC (basic ingredients of computer's brain, the processor) OR dennis, who could not have done what he did without computers ?

Or is it Dennis, the inventor of C/unix or Bill-gates/Steve Jobs ?

We need right context in any thing...just like in stock market, which doesn't care if there is rampant fraud on wall.st - which is is a non-factor in short term, as we learned in last 3 years (2009-2010 stock market boom).
Docberg
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Another real icon in personal computing was Dr. Gary Kildall. He developed the first workable personal computer operating system, which was later pirated by Microsoft. He put a lot of computers on desks, including mine. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Kaypros. He worked for the joy of it, and encouraged his employees to be entrepreneurs, leading to Adobe Systems among others. His untimely death was most unfortunate.
Phdude
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Truly a sad day. I've had the pleasure to meet dmr personally and overlapped with him a bit while at Bell Labs. In addition to all his technical contributions, he was a very,* very* nice and modest person. He never gloated or boasted about his contributions or his awards (and why should he? Only insecure mediocrities gloat and boast). A true icon indeed.

Reason: typo
Onemoment
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Steve Jobs seemed to have had more of an elitist "us against them" mentality. This is reflected in Apple. My one memory of him was is speaking a keynote at a Usenix conference, saying that X-Windows was brain-dead.


In his '90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie mentioned this saying Steve Jobs was half-right. "Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks."

On the other hand, Dennis Ritchie was one of the most approachable, helpful, funny, and kindhearted people you'll ever want to meet. His spirit is generally reflected in the Unix community today. Only the most warm and friendly memories of him. It's also no surprise we're only hearing of his weekend passing now.

RIP DMR

Reason: My memory is not so good!
Drb
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Let this talented scientist rest in peace.

On a side note, the history of Bell Labs is very telling. They developed, among many other things, photovoltaic cells in 1940's (!!!!), zone melting, WLAN many years before it got adopted, etc etc etc. Their contribution to technology and science simply can not be overstated, and I would say that most modern conveniences have in one or another way been developed by the Bell labs. However in last 10-20 years they have been devastated by layoffs, reorganizations, and complete turning away from basic science. In the current anti-scientific environment in US basic science is not needed.
Pika-steph
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Karl - I would suggest actually adding his photo to this Ticker. People should see the face of true and honest genius....and a REAL symbol of honest capitalism.

inline

Everyone knew what Jobs looked like; I bet no one would have recognized Ritchie. Maybe putting his face out there is the best posthumous tribute we could provide?

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Bertdilbert
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Quote:
But he did it, and turned Apple into a household name with massive profits, by exploiting child and near-slave labor to the point that their contract factories in China have had to put nets up so you can't commit suicide by jumping off the buildings!


The US only has 5% of the world's population. Are not the rest of the world entitled to have jobs? I don't see a problem of deploying capital where it gets it 's best return.

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Here's another one who is still around:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay

Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

He was at Xerox PARC when they developed the graphical user interface concept later stolen by Apple for its Macintosh. Apple, of course, sued Microsoft when they stole it from Apple.

Reason: Typo
Uncleoxidant
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As a software engineer I've certainly written my share of C code - it's central to so much software that's out there running right now. And Unix led to all manner of OS innovation (including Linux and BSD which Apple's OS X is based on). So much that we enjoy now would not exist in it's current form without the work of DMR.

A lot of digital ink has been spilled worshiping the "taste" and "style" of the other guy who died last week. But from a software engineering perspective it's clear that DMR had impeccable taste and style. Even his "The C Programming Language" (known by software folks as the K&R book after it's authors) is one of the best, most concise books on programming in existence.

RIP DMR

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Tm22721
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I knew Dennis and his cohorts at Bell Labs, hiring several later to develop industrial automation products at GE. I have several dog-eared copies of his C book it is a masterpiece, IMO everything since is overcomplicated BS including C and C#.


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Jhc
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#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
printf("Hello world, thanks Dennis for awesome language, may he rest in peace.\n");
return 0;
}

I had lot of memories with C language. I learned C language in early 1980's and I wrote auto insurance rating program in C when everyone else in insurance industry was writing in Cobol/Basic and I wrote the entire accounting/billing system in C in one month with ClarkNet (the first Baltimore ISP I founded back in 1993). I still have the C language bible, the K&R book.

Dennis, Ken T and Brian K are true pioneers in computer revolution.
Obsidian
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#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
(void)printf("RIP Dennis.\n");
return 0;
}

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Fijiaaron
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We get it Karl, Capitalism = Bad, occupy wall st., hang the bankers, smoke dope.
Jeffrey_thomason
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Quote:
I knew Dennis and his cohorts at Bell Labs, hiring several later to develop industrial automation products at GE. I have several dog-eared copies of his C book it is a masterpiece, IMO everything since is overcomplicated BS including C and C#.


C# is a much closer sibling to Java than to C. Just sayin' :)

Highly recommend checking out dmr's bell labs page, lots of neat stuff there: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/

Another recommendation, if you haven't read "A Quarter Century of Unix", it's worth a read as well: http://www.amazon.com/Quarter-Century-UN....


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Willoo
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Xerox did attempt to sue Apple for the GUI interface but the judge through it out of court for a variety of reasons. I worked on the first Star 8010 workstation with graphical interface in the mid 80's. It was magical at the time. I can easily understand why the researchers at Parc felt ripped of by Steve Jobs.
Sandor
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Quote:
I wrote the entire accounting/billing system in C in one month with ClarkNet (the first Baltimore ISP I founded back in 1993)


I met you when I worked for Bell Atlantic Network Integration in White Marsh.

C4talyst
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Nice Ticker...

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