The Father of C Language-dennis ritchie

People's memory of Ricky is far less than the overwhelming memory of Jobs. But Ricky is worth doing.

Someone came out and said something fair.

"The death of Steve Jobs caused great repercussions, which is of course reasonable. Even if the influence is actually wider, Dennis is not known to the public, "said Rob Parker. Rob is a programmer who works at Google. As a legend in the industry, he worked with Ricky in the famous Bell Lab for 20 years.

On Wednesday night, Parker posted on Google+ that Ricky died suddenly at his home in New Jersey last weekend after a long struggle with illness. Although it caused a lot of repercussions in the technical circle, in the mainstream media, Ricky did not get the mourning commensurate with his great influence. As the father of C language, dennis ritchie and Ken Thomson, a senior researcher at Bell Labs, developed Unix in C language, which is an operating system that is very dependent on today's world, including the Apple Empire under the leadership of Steve Jobs.

"Now the Internet basically uses these two things: C language and UNIX," Parker told Wired magazine. "The browser is written in C language. The kernel of UNIX, which is basically the basis of Internet operation, is also written in C language, and so is Web server. If not, it is written in Java or C++, both of which are derivatives of C language. Either Python or Ruby, implemented in C language. Then I can almost guarantee that the network hardware running these programs is driven by software developed by C language. "

"It is hard to exaggerate Dennis's ubiquitous influence on the information economy infrastructure."

He added that Windows used to be written in C language, and UNIX also supported Apple's desktop operating system Mac OS X and the operating system iOS of iPhone and iPad. "If Jobs is the king in front of the stage, then Nach is the king behind the scenes." Martin Rinard, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, commented. Rinard is also a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

"The greatness of Steve Jobs is that he has a unique taste and creates fascinating and eye-catching products. Ricky is good at developing infrastructure used by some technicians. These infrastructures are used by people every day, but they are unknown. "

From b language to c language

In order to better develop UNIX, dennis ritchie invented the C language. The original UNIX kernel was written in assembly language, and then they quickly decided to use a high-level language to better control the complex data in the operating system. 1970, they tried to use Fortran, but failed to achieve the expected goal. Then, on the basis of B language founded by Thomson, Rich proposed a new language.

No matter where you hear the news, B language is named after Thomson's wife Bonnie or BCPL, which is a language developed by Cambridge in the mid-1960s.

B language is an explanatory language-which means that it is interpreted and executed by middleware running on CPU-while C language is a compiled language. It is translated into machine code and executed directly on the CPU. Even so, C was a high-level language at that time. C language provides the flexibility that Richie and Thomson want, but it is also fast.

Ricky has been telling a joke that C language has both "the powerful ability of assembly language and ... the convenience of assembly language". In other words, he admits that C language is not perfect, and it is close to the hardware level. Now C language is considered as a low-level language rather than a high-level language. But this joke is not fair. C language provides a real concept of data structure, which is advanced enough from this point of view.

"When you are writing a large program, such as UNIX, you must manage the interaction between various modules: all users, file systems, disks, program execution, and so on. Effective management requires good data representation, which is the so-called data structure, "Parker said. "

"Without data structure organization, it is basically impossible to write a kernel as consistent and elegant as UNIX. It needs a mechanism to organize data, and Fortran is not good at this. "

At that time, it was rare to write an operating system, which also gave Richie and Thomson the opportunity to transplant the operating system to other platforms in the late 1970s. "From then on, the flood gate of UNIX was opened," Parker said. "This is all due to the C language."

Apple, Microsoft and other companies

At the same time, C language began to spread all over the world, from Bell Labs to universities all over the world, and also to the software company Microsoft, which emerged suddenly in the 1980s. "The development of C language is a huge leap and a good compromise ... C language has reached a perfect balance, allowing you to develop efficiently at a higher level without losing control of every detail," said Bill Dally, chief scientist of NVIDIA and Bell and professor of engineering at Stanford University. "It sets the tone for software development in the next few decades."

As Parker pointed out, the data structure constructed by C language later developed into an object-oriented paradigm, which was widely adopted by modern programming languages such as C++ and Java.

1973, Richie published a paper on this language, which was considered as a sign of the beginning of the revolution. Five years later, he and his colleague Brian Kernighan published the authoritative work of C language: C Programming Language. This book was originally written by Kenehan for C language, and later he finished it with Dennis.

When Parker was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, he read this book in the afternoon when he returned home due to illness. "Compared with other manuals, this reference manual is just a clear and easy-to-read model. Undoubtedly a classic. " He said: "I was sick and turned over in bed. I didn't expect it to make me forget my illness."

Like many college students, Parker has begun to use C language. As Bell Labs began to distribute UNIX source code, it gradually became popular on university campuses. In addition, UNIX also gave birth to the modern open source movement. This is not an exaggeration. Ricky's influence cannot be overemphasized. Even the Turing Award won by Ricky in 1983 and the National Technical Medal won by Ricky in 1998 cannot fully explain his contribution.

In the eyes of Kenihan and Parker, Ricky is a rare and withdrawn person. "I have worked with him for more than 20 years, but I still don't know him very well," Parker said. But that's not why he keeps a low profile. Jobs is also a loner, but keeping a low profile will only make people admire him more and more.

Ricky lived in a completely different era and working environment from Jobs, which may be the reason why he didn't get the commemoration he deserved. However, there are always big bosses who can understand his legacy. "As we all know, Newton said that he stood on the shoulders of giants," Kenyon said. "We all stood on Dennis's shoulders."