Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
Ken Thompson, short sighted? No, it's because of that specific time in which he spoke those words. At that time, a program was very 'simple':
You put stuff in it. The program does something with it, and it puts stuff out. In doing so, it solved a problem. If a program didn't do this, it was useless and wasteful of computing resources. Yes, a GUI solved the problem of lack of userfriendlyness, but it didn't solve stuff like 'what is the result of adding 2 and 5?", and thus it wasn't deemed necessary.
That man did not just use a computer. He defined computers as we know them today. (And chess computers/programs as well.) He developed an operating system (Unix), 45 years ago, that is either still in use today, has descendants that are in use, or have been cloned/based on said stuff.
If someone in the computer industry should attain god status, then it would be Ken Thompson; and his colleague Dennis Ritchie as well. And Brian Kerningham would make a nice demi-god.
Every operating system in (meaningful) use today is a Unix/Unix-like, except for Windows... and ironically, it has been moving into Unix territory for the last 10 years, with a more powerful command-line, detaching of the user interface (for the new Windows 10 Core), and detaching some of the more user-centric sub-systems so they don't need to be installed on a server.
|
I vote for Ma COBOL for Goddess...
(For the younger generation (Grace Murray Hopper)