[Cialug] Unix History - Thompson and Ritchie

[Nicolai]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 10:53:06AM -0500, Eric Junker wrote:
> I thought some of you may be interested in seeing this video that shows 
> Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs discussing Unix. They have 
> some epic beards.
> 
> http://youtu.be/7FjX7r5icV8
> 
> My favorite quote is when Ritchie says "What we wanted to preserve was 
> not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system 
> around which a fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the 
> essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, 
> time-sharing systems, is not just to type programs into a terminal 
> instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication."

That's beautiful in every way.

And the Unix beards... when I'm an old man I'll definitely get one.

I wish there was more information on Thompson and Ritchie passed around.
A lot of people probably don't know who they are.  Without their work, I
wonder what kind of computers we'd be using and what we'd be doing with
them.

Nicolai