Another technical pioneer passes on

[crfriend]

Today's been a rather bad day for most of my compatriots at work for many of them only know of the work of Dennis Ritchie who passed in the last rotation of this Earth.

The fact that so many folks that I work with are so wedded to this remarkable man's work speaks volumes, in many different senses. In the bluntest sense, Mr. Ritchie helped develop the UNIX operation system, which makes places like SkirtCafe possible (and although there are other options, UNIX prevails because it's ubiquitous). Mr. Ritchie also was one of the developers of the programming language known as "C", and that language has become more ubiquitous in programming circles than English has become as the lingua franca of trade and business.

The passing of a pioneer always pains me, and I have vast respect for Mr. Ritchie's accomplishments and his contributions to the field of computing; he will be sorely missed, as are all of the silent voices who have already left our midst and those voices yet to be stilled by the unrelenting course of time. However, I can also pin some level of blame on the developer of the "portable assembler" that is "C", and most pointedly at the standard library that soon became standard with the language's wide acceptance -- for it was, and remains, that standard library's methodology of handling strings (arbitrary sequences of characters, much like this post) that led directly to sloppy programming habits that underly most of the technical vulnerabilities that most computers and computing systems have today. Can you say, "stack overrun"? I thought so.

UNIX, and its variants have stood me in good stead for a good many years, and I do not intend to slag off on one of its progenitors. But one must eventually call a spade a spade, and in the case of the "C" programming language (and all its offspring) the null-terminated string has been a source of opportunity for ne'er-do-wells since day one. I do not blame Mr. Ritchie directly for this, for it is perfectly possible to define overrun-proof constructs in the language; my hope is that he played but a limited part in the definition of the standard library.

So, Dennis, rest in peace. For all your work, all your efforts, and all your vision, you deserve a peaceful rest. Slumber soundly. We'll leave the blinking-lights on for you.

[ethelthefrog]

I, for one, will mourn Dennis Ritchie much more than Steve Jobs. Steve gave us oohshiny; Dennis gave us the tools that make everything go. I agree entirely with Carl's assessment of strings, but hey, nothing is perfect.

RIP Dennis, you were a giant and we stand on your shoulders.


Paul.

[kingfish]

Sorry to hear Ritchie go. I also concur with Paul's statement. From the largest "cloud" systems down to the lowly air cleaner sitting on my head board. His tools have and continue to be instrumental in making all of our lives better. (The Holmes Air Harmony air purifier has a PIC microcontroller, complete with a couple of pages of "C" source code, to drive the "filter check" lights.)

And as for a lack of built in buffer management, you are right. It has none.
It is a good thing that crashing software (at least in the lab) typically doesn't involve physical damage.
I actually equate it to not automatically installing brake calipers onto every set of wheels. Your car may need them, but your lawn mower not so much.

[steve66oh]

I actually equate it to not automatically installing brake calipers onto every set of wheels. Your car may need them, but your lawn mower not so much.

Have you ever seen lawnmower racing?

[Since1982]

I've seen all kinds of stupid ways to waste money betting on foolish things. I once watched 12 people put up $100 each, turn a vegetable basket upside down on soft dirt to make a circle, removed the basket and dropped 12 live centipedes in the center and the one that got out first won $1,200.00....Each 'pede had a different color paint dab on his tail that denoted his name. "Big Jiggleberry" won. The race itself was boring, took about an hour, the players had to keep waking the centipedes up to keep them going. The winner dancing around in circles and tripping headfirst, then crashing into the basket was very funny.