Interview with Dennis Ritchie (2003)

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Interview with Dennis Ritchie (2003)

In 2003 I was running a website called unix.se. One day I figured, why isn't ask Dennis Ritchie for an interview? I fired off an e-mail to and [email protected] he quickly replied advising me to "try some questions and see what happens". So I did, and he graciously answered them. Looking back, I wish I ' d come to different questions and followed up on some–but Hey, I is only in the time. Anyway, I figured it ' d is worthwhile digging it up from the archives.

Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson (sitting) and a PDP-11, 1972 Photo:peter Hamer. CC BY-SA 2.0

February 6, 2003

How and when do you first come in contact with computers?

At some point when I am an undergraduate in college (about 1960) I went to some non-course talks about computers that int Rigued me, and I signed up for the regular (introductory) One-term course. The first part is about analog computers, then a brief bit on Punch-card equipment, then some about real digital Compu Ters, in which we prepared a program for the Univac I. I was a undergraduate Physics major, but began to intrigued more by both the theory and practice of computing. So in grad school my thesis work is fairly theoretical (hierarchies of recursive functions), but I also began to get more into the practical aspects. I was for three years one of the teaching assistants for successive versions of that same introductory course–which by tha T time had moved to the IBM 7094.

What does consider your greatest achievement in the field of computing to be?

The single thing that I ' m happiest on is, the notion of making the Unix system portable was mostly mine. C was already implemented on several quite different machines and operating systems, Unix were already being distributed on The PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system is new.

Any new accomplishments in sight? What is your current project (s)?

There is no new grand thing to Announce–i ' ve been spending more time on history! Over the past several years, I ' ve been more in a managerial role. The visible things that has come from the group has been the Plan 9 system and Inferno, but I hasten to say the IDE As and the work has come from colleagues. I was more a pay-check signer and giver of the talks when others just wanted to work.

How much time does you spend programming nowadays?

Little programming as such. I fix things now and then, the more often tweak the HTML and make scripts to do things.

Could describe a typical work day at Bell Labs? What software?

I tend to come in late unless there's a meeting, but spend a fair amount of time tending to e-mail communication. My own environment (on PC hardware) actually runs Windows NT, but it's used mainly as a graphics terminal connected to a Plan 9 Server, in a-approximately analogous to an X Windows client. The connection at home are now via cable modems (until last summer ISDN), and Ethernet at the office. Any editing, software work, and mail are done with this exported Plan 9. For stuff like getting Excel and Word things, plus much WWW browsing, I revert to NT.

Does any predictions as to the future of C?

C is declining somewhat on usage compared to C + +, and maybe Java, but perhaps even more compared to higher-level scripting Languages. It ' s still fairly strong for the basic system-type things.

What's your opinion on Microkernels vs. monolithic?

They ' re not all this different when you actually use them. "Micro" kernels tend to being pretty large these days, and "monolithic" with loadable device drivers is taking up more on th E advantages claimed for microkernels.

Do you agree with Rob Pike's thoughts on the (IR) relevance of systems? (http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/rob/utah2000.ps)

Pretty much, although Rob was stating he case in a deliberately provocative. It's true that compared with the scene when Unix started, today the ecological niches is fairly full, and fresh new OS ID EAS is harder to come by, or at least to propagate.

What does think about the development of Linux and the BSD variants? Do you think they ' ll eventually replace all the proprietary Unix systems?

As a general phenomenon, I think they ' re great, but they suffer from much the same struggles and competition that the prop Rietary ones did and does. Sun and HP, SGI, IBM, Digital others all has (or had) variants of the same thing–so too do Linux and the BSDs. Their proprietors may has different motivations for producing the variants, of course. And of course each does has its own attractions. There is a kind of brand differentiation, and this is one of the reasons why portability are hard.

Any thoughts about the GNU project? How do you first learn about it?

I can ' t remember when I first learned on it, but a long time ago. The True-gnu philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well As providing real software. The interesting thing is the the-the-free-software ideas has begun to influence major existing commercial players. At the same time, much of it seems to has to does with recreating things we or others had already done; It seems rather derivative intellectually; Is there a dearth of really new ideas? But still, it's a great satisfaction so much of it have built on top of the a basis we helped to establish.

Who is some of the people so you admire? (in the computer World or otherwise)?

I ' m not a person who particularly had heroes when growing up. Obviously, the had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically he, likewise C ' s predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force In getting it together). The meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.

Outside work, what does you enjoy doing?

It all sort of merges together. Much of it is computer-related (the WWW and all that). Other than, reading actual paper, probably. I ' ve done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, and not for too long at a time. I ' m a home-body and get fatigued by it fairly soon, but enjoy thinking back on experiences when I ' ve returned and then oft En wish I ' d arranged a longer stay in the somewhat exotic place.

Any music, literature or movies can recommend?

I Listen to mostly-classical music, but the mostly by Radio–i ' m isn't an audiophile. For books, I don ' t read much fiction, but like travel essays and good Pop-science:say Stephen Jay Gould or Kip Thorne. Also Some humor–i am a great fan of S. J. Perelman. Right now I ' m reading John McPhee's "the founding Fish."

Bonus

In 2002 I asked the random unix/open source folks for screenshots of their working environments and collected them on unix.se. Naturally, Dennis Ritchie was one of them. Here's what he sent on July 9, 2002:

Dennis Ritchie ' s desktop, July 2002

Attached is a (truthful) screenshot from when I read your mail.

The underlying OS is WNT 4, as might was guessed from the desktop display to the left. Almost all the space was taken up by a Super-window running the Drawterm program, an (approximate) analog of X server that ' s connected to a Plan 9 CPU server (over ISDN; the server was at the main Bell Labs location, and I ' m at home).

The biggest (pale yellow) window is a Plan 9 application called Acme, which includes a mail utility showing your message. Smaller subwindows within the drawterm display was the Mail-notifier program, and a shell window whose latest output is fr Om our dictionary utility.

I also got one from Brian Kernighan:

Brian Kernighan ' s desktop, July 2002

My desktop is pretty boring, since it consists of xterm for Windows to whatever UNIX system I am using at the moment. The machine itself are likely to being running some X-window server like exceed on some flavor of windows, though for many yea RS I just used an X terminal.

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Interview with Dennis Ritchie (2003)