Dennis Ritchie, a part of my life
Today I read the news of the passing away of Dennis Ritchie, and I couldn't help but dig my memories and pictures of my professional past. My University (Universidad Simon Bolivar) had a computer lab room named after him, and opened by him. Wired gave a nice remembrance of Dennis, where they summarise his work as King of the Invisible.
How could I forget that my first serious bit of programming was to write a C program, using vi, on a PDP 11/45 running Unix? This machine had about 10-15 terminals on campus, and a whopping 256KB RAM and a 64MB hard drive, (yep youngsters, you read all that right), and occupied the better part of the little datacentre at the "PDP Lab" (the place was later renamed to "Laboratorio Docente de Computacion, or LDC.) I was an "operador" (sys admin) at the lab about 20 years ago. How time flies.
So I thought I'd post some of my own pictures and memoirs of those good times, for posterity. I also happen to like photography and I took a course at the university which made us capture our day to day lives. A scanner did the rest a few years later. In hindsight, what a great thing that was!
This is the beast at the lab. Word has it that it was the first UNIX system in Latin America, and I got to help dismantle it. What I can't believe is that I still remember the bootstrap address that you had to enter into the panel with the switches on the left hand side: 773110 ("111111011001001000")
This picture was (and still is) of the "Dennis Ritchie" lab room, or room 221, which as I said, was actually opened by Dennis himself before my time. Next to it is room 225, the "Ken Thompson" lab room and those computers in the picture are 8088 based PCs, some of the first IBM PCs ever made. The room would later host a number of Sun workstations too, which defined my future professional allegiances.You can see the PDP in the "PECERA" (fish bowl) at the back, on the right hand side. Inside the "pecera", Fernando Naranjo, "Toronjo" talking to Lionel Baptista. I will never forget Toronjo's Mac OS mouse pointer "update" from an arrow to a middle finger.
But a fair bit of time has passed since these golden days where computing was an obscure art for a select few. Still, back in May 2003 I was back in Venezuela for my brother's wedding (he got divorced a few years later so he owes me an airfare) and while there I decided to pay a visit to the PDP lab. You should have seen the faces of the current "operadores" when I told them I was now with Sun in Australia! The picture below is a snap of my designated driver, colleague, mate and now aussie compatriot Rafael Montaño "Rafa" and I at the entrance of the lab. Note the printout on top of the "taquilla" - your average dot-matrix banner of the times. Today, Rafa and I are as close friends as ever, but we sit on opposing sides of the industry, wearing a blue badge and a red badge from Monday to Friday. For a few days back in 2009, it looked as I would be wearing a blue badge too, before Oracle snapped Sun from IBM's acquiring grip.
Anyway, in closing, and back to Dennis Ritchie, who as Martin Rinard, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT points out, is the king of what is largely invisible. Dennis was the real architect of what IT is today. He created the dough that let Steve Jobs, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison and so many others cook great pizzas. Heck, the Internet is dependent on Unix and C. Pretty much everything that understands binary and doesn't require daily O/S updates is ;)
So as not to forget, I chose to scan the front of one of the few IT books I still possess in print. Second edition mind you. Back then it was rare to "own" a printed book, having to settle for photocopies of the real thing. I still keep my copy of "El Entorno de Programacion UNIX", by Kernighan and Pike too.
The preface reads "The computing world has undergone a revolution since the publication of The C Proramming Language in 1978. Big computers are much bigger, and personal computers have capabilities that rival the mainframes of a decade ago. During this time, C has changed too, although only modestly, and it has spread far beyond its origins as the language of the UNIX operating system."
The preface to the first edition, reads, in the second paragraph "C was originally designed for and implemented on the UNIX operating system on the DEC PDP-11, by Dennis Ritchie. The operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX applications programs (including all of the software to prepare this book) are written in C."
So there you have it. He wrote the greatest O/S on the planet using the greatest language on the planet. Then he used them both to write books too.
Acknowledgment: Colleagues of those times that came to my mind as I perused my memories and the pictures: Carmine di Biase, Joao da Silva, Bernardo Feijoo, Fernando "Toronjo" Naranjo, Lionel Baptista, Guillermo "Memo" Garcia, Mercedes "Merce" Lopez, Patrick O'Callaghan ("POC"), Alberto "Beto" Nava, and Alberto Dominguez (didn't we write the thing together?), to name a few. Post mortem memories from Angelo Chirico and Ernesto Leal.
How could I forget that my first serious bit of programming was to write a C program, using vi, on a PDP 11/45 running Unix? This machine had about 10-15 terminals on campus, and a whopping 256KB RAM and a 64MB hard drive, (yep youngsters, you read all that right), and occupied the better part of the little datacentre at the "PDP Lab" (the place was later renamed to "Laboratorio Docente de Computacion, or LDC.) I was an "operador" (sys admin) at the lab about 20 years ago. How time flies.
So I thought I'd post some of my own pictures and memoirs of those good times, for posterity. I also happen to like photography and I took a course at the university which made us capture our day to day lives. A scanner did the rest a few years later. In hindsight, what a great thing that was!
This is the beast at the lab. Word has it that it was the first UNIX system in Latin America, and I got to help dismantle it. What I can't believe is that I still remember the bootstrap address that you had to enter into the panel with the switches on the left hand side: 773110 ("111111011001001000")
This picture was (and still is) of the "Dennis Ritchie" lab room, or room 221, which as I said, was actually opened by Dennis himself before my time. Next to it is room 225, the "Ken Thompson" lab room and those computers in the picture are 8088 based PCs, some of the first IBM PCs ever made. The room would later host a number of Sun workstations too, which defined my future professional allegiances.You can see the PDP in the "PECERA" (fish bowl) at the back, on the right hand side. Inside the "pecera", Fernando Naranjo, "Toronjo" talking to Lionel Baptista. I will never forget Toronjo's Mac OS mouse pointer "update" from an arrow to a middle finger.
But a fair bit of time has passed since these golden days where computing was an obscure art for a select few. Still, back in May 2003 I was back in Venezuela for my brother's wedding (he got divorced a few years later so he owes me an airfare) and while there I decided to pay a visit to the PDP lab. You should have seen the faces of the current "operadores" when I told them I was now with Sun in Australia! The picture below is a snap of my designated driver, colleague, mate and now aussie compatriot Rafael Montaño "Rafa" and I at the entrance of the lab. Note the printout on top of the "taquilla" - your average dot-matrix banner of the times. Today, Rafa and I are as close friends as ever, but we sit on opposing sides of the industry, wearing a blue badge and a red badge from Monday to Friday. For a few days back in 2009, it looked as I would be wearing a blue badge too, before Oracle snapped Sun from IBM's acquiring grip.
Anyway, in closing, and back to Dennis Ritchie, who as Martin Rinard, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT points out, is the king of what is largely invisible. Dennis was the real architect of what IT is today. He created the dough that let Steve Jobs, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison and so many others cook great pizzas. Heck, the Internet is dependent on Unix and C. Pretty much everything that understands binary and doesn't require daily O/S updates is ;)
So as not to forget, I chose to scan the front of one of the few IT books I still possess in print. Second edition mind you. Back then it was rare to "own" a printed book, having to settle for photocopies of the real thing. I still keep my copy of "El Entorno de Programacion UNIX", by Kernighan and Pike too.
The preface to the first edition, reads, in the second paragraph "C was originally designed for and implemented on the UNIX operating system on the DEC PDP-11, by Dennis Ritchie. The operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX applications programs (including all of the software to prepare this book) are written in C."
So there you have it. He wrote the greatest O/S on the planet using the greatest language on the planet. Then he used them both to write books too.
Acknowledgment: Colleagues of those times that came to my mind as I perused my memories and the pictures: Carmine di Biase, Joao da Silva, Bernardo Feijoo, Fernando "Toronjo" Naranjo, Lionel Baptista, Guillermo "Memo" Garcia, Mercedes "Merce" Lopez, Patrick O'Callaghan ("POC"), Alberto "Beto" Nava, and Alberto Dominguez (didn't we write the thing together?), to name a few. Post mortem memories from Angelo Chirico and Ernesto Leal.
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