UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity. – Dennis Ritchie
A new release of Plan 9 happened in June, and at about the same time a new release of the Inferno system, which began here, was announced by Vita Nuova. – Dennis Ritchie
C++ and Java, say, are presumably growing faster than plain C, but I bet C will still be around. – Dennis Ritchie
One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it. – Dennis Ritchie
I’m just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell. – Dennis Ritchie
I can’t recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open – any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate. – Dennis Ritchie
My work was fairly theoretical. It was in recursive function theory. And in particular, hierarchies of functions in terms of computational complexity. I got involved in real computers and programming mainly by being – well, I was interested even as I came to graduate school. – Dennis Ritchie
The kind of programming that C provides will probably remain similar absolutely or slowly decline in usage, but relatively, JavaScript or its variants, or XML, will continue to become more central. – Dennis Ritchie
At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas? – Dennis Ritchie
C was already implemented on several quite different machines and OSs, Unix was already being distributed on the PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system was new. – Dennis Ritchie
At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they’re designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler. – Dennis Ritchie
When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn’t developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd. – Dennis Ritchie
I’ve done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time. – Dennis Ritchie
C is peculiar in a lot of ways, but it, like many other successful things, has a certain unity of approach that stems from development in a small group. – Dennis Ritchie
The visible things that have come from the group have been the Plan 9 system and Inferno, but I hasten to say that the ideas and the work have come from colleagues. – Dennis Ritchie