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Dennis Ritchie Quotes

1941–2011 United States

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – c. October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist and winner, with Kenneth Thompson, of the 1983 Turing Award.

United States
Computer scientists

Random Dennis Ritchie quote

7 quotes

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity.

Life's a bitch and then your feet wear down.

[C has] the power of assembly language and the convenience of … assembly language.

Another danger is that commercial pressures of one sort or another will divert the attention of the best thinkers from real innovation to exploitation of the current fad, from prospecting to mining a known lode.

Reflections on Software Research (1984)

Usenet is a strange place.

I think the Linux phenomenon is quite delightful, because it draws so strongly on the basis that Unix provided. Linux seems to be the among the healthiest of the direct Unix derivatives, though there are also the various BSD systems as well as the more official offerings from the workstation and mainframe manufacturers.

On Unix and Unix-like systems (1999)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Dennis Ritchie (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.