68 Quotes by 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.

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.

From an operating system research point of view, Unix is if not dead certainly old stuff, and it’s clear that people should be looking beyond it.

I’ve done a reasonable amount of travelling, which I enjoyed, but not for too long at a time.

Any editing, software work, and mail is done in this exported Plan 9.

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.

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.

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.

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.