[Beijing website production] What have we learned from Dennis, the father of C language

What have we learned from Dennis, the father of C language?

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, the father of UNIX and the father of the C language branch that we all know, left us last week. However, his influence on computer science and related fields is so great that he can even be as famous as Turing, the father of computer science, and Jobs, who recently died (although there will be some disputes, history tells us that this is indeed the case.

UNIX is a powerful multi-user, multitasking operating system that supports multiple processor architectures. UNXI was developed in this way. Ken Thompson, one of the UNIX developers at that time, developed a game called Space Travel. After running it on MULTICS, he found that the game was very slow and expensive. At that time, it cost $75 to run. At that time, $75 was a large amount. The high price made computer enthusiasts unable to be interested in it. So Dennis and Thompson worked together to create their paradise for fans, a place where they can test small programs and share results. He was born to study physics and mathematics, but fell in love with computer science at the right time. The most special and key idea of the UNIX system they created is "sharing". So what can we learn from this computer giant?

First: Be interested in what you do. Their original intention was not to make money, but in fact, at the beginning, to save money, or to install their games into a cheaper machine.

Second: It is necessary to work outside the comfort zone. Dennis is a physicist and mathematician, but he has become the most legendary programmer. Obviously, his professional background helped him to develop C language or UNIX. As Dennis Ritchie said, Dennis is not afraid to work in a strange field. If Dennis spent decades on obscure mathematics, UNIX might die.

Third: innovative thinking. Dennis was lucky in Bell Lab, where there was sufficient funds and no shortage of staff, so he was able to work with his friends to develop what they wanted according to their own schedule.

Finally: Know how to share. Now many enterprises like to keep secrets and hide their core technologies, but this is unsuccessful in my opinion. Their ideas and attitudes are not conducive to the development of the company.

It can be said that UNIX is the most important software in the world today. It is important because it is open and available to anyone. Many people may say that opening up is unprofitable. In my opinion, such people are the most pessimistic and stupid.

Dennis also taught us that the computer world is not an unfathomable world. Although any of us may not achieve the achievements of him and Bell/AT&T, especially considering their background and the origin of the information age, it is not important. After all, we have learned a lot from UNIX source code over the years: "You don't need to understand it", we just need to create something more valuable based on it. ( High end website construction )