Inventors of Unix Win Japan Prize 105
jbrodkin writes "The inventors of Unix and the C programming language, one of whom also created the first master-level chess-playing machine, have been awarded the prestigious Japan Prize for their work in building the Unix operating system in 1969. Ken Thompson, who is now a distinguished engineer at Google, and Dennis Ritchie, who is retired, were researchers at Bell Labs four decades ago when they 'developed the Unix operating system which has significantly advanced computer software, hardware and networks over the past four decades, and facilitated the realization of the Internet,' the Japan Prize Foundation said Tuesday in awarding them the 2011 prize. The pair join previous winners such as Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee. In addition to developing Unix, Thompson also played a key role in building Belle, the first chess-playing computer to achieve a master-level rating and five-time winner of the now-defunct North American Computer Chess Championship in the 1970s and 1980s. Ritchie and Thompson have also been credited with developing the C programming language, a process that occurred in conjunction with the development of Unix."
mad props (Score:3)
and congrats... 40 years later their influence is still amazing.
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Indeed, that this OS is still vibrant and alive after so long is a real acheivement.
As a matter of curiousity, could someone please answer why Unix and the various derivatives are still so strong? Why are there so few new OSs that match this one in terms of security etc? Did these guys create the best OS it was possible to make first time or are there better, new OSs waiting in the wings? As you can probably tell, i dont know too much about this so please be gentle....
Re:mad props (Score:4, Informative)
You apparently never used Unix during the 70s and 80s. Unix "security" was a constant joke at least until the mid 90s.
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You apparently never used Unix during the 70s and 80s. Unix "security" was a constant joke at least until the mid 90s.
Blasphemy!
Re:mad props (Score:4, Informative)
UNIX was designed to be as scalable, robust, and secure (relative to standards in those days) as they could possibly build it.
Redirection, Pipes, shells, heck the whole IO structure of UNIX was/is IMHO a great work of art.
Then other people started adding stuff to UNIX and eventually Linux that just kept making it better and better like PERL, Apache, X, .... many more.
UNIX is just and has always been good stuff.
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lol, perl
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The main reason i see for it is in comparison to most other OSs, everything* can be accessed as a file. This includes most devices and sockets. That has made unix very agile and has allowed it to adapt with the times. The only OS i can think of that goes further than unix in this respect is plan 9, which was also designed by bell labs as the successor to unix. Plan 9 goes as far as allowing peripherals on the network to be accessed as files.
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everything is a file, even on remote nodes (Score:1)
> The main reason i see for it is in comparison to most other OSs,
> everything* can be accessed as a file. This includes most devices
> and sockets. That has made unix very agile and has allowed it to
> adapt with the times. The only OS i can think of that goes further
> than unix in this respect is plan 9, which was also designed by
> bell labs as the successor to unix. Plan 9 goes as far as allowing
> peripherals on the network to be accessed as files.
There is a reason NFS actually stands
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Beyond what JWW typed I assume not designing for the low-end desktops helped to. If there was any at the time.
Since the machines it was built for had more capability maybe that helped it last until even the simplest machines has as much or more capability.
failure enables (Score:3)
Unix succeeded so well because it encourages failure. The C language is Spartan and direct. There are no safety nets. People who can't keep their pointers straight soon find themselves working in a different profession, such as programming in Java. This is the same dynamic described by Adam Smith for the free market.
Re:mad props (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much about security as it is about flexibility and a new way of doing things. At the time Unix was created, most operating systems where huge, ugly and complex beasts, developed in a bureaucratic way by enormous corporations. Software development was done similarly to the way processors are designed. It was a land of engineers, not a land of hackers. Unix was simpler, more elegant, modular and hacker friendly. At the time, OSs where written in assembly, almost no exceptions. Have you ever seen a mainframe sysadmin? Those guys where running the circus back then. Then this bunch of hippies came in and wrote an OS in a high-level language, and it turned out to be awesome. Unix was the software-world response to the social events and revolutions during the 60's.
At first, it wasn't as evolved or secure as other systems, and it was ridiculed because of that. But Unix is like Lego, and there was a huge amount of young people in computing that related to this concept, and could do awesome things with the building blocks provided by Unix.
It was the first OS to change the way things where done and introduce metaphors in computing. People think thap FApple and m$ started the metaphor-in-computing trend, with icons, menues and folders. That's just not true. "Everything is a file" was a revolution. The simple, short commands, pipes, advanced interactive shells, all of that made Unix the choice of a new generation. And it still is, anyone serious about software development is on some kind of Unix variant. It's wasn't the technical merits of Unix, it was the philosophy that made it so huge.
I once asked RMS if he could imagine the Free Software world as it is today, developing something like the Incompatible time-sharing system. Of course, this is RMS and I didn't really get a straight answer, he just rambled about how it wasn't a valid question because the Incompatible time-sharing system wasn't modern enough to be usable nowdays. But I know the answer is NO. The Unix model and Free Software have a LOT in common, and Unix helped pave the way for the way the world works right now. Whether the usual suspects like it or not, Free Software runs most of the Internet, and the world as we know wouldn't exist without the internet. Unix has always been the man behind the curtain, but it's been more relevant in the last 40 years of history than many think. Even now, it's still obscure, think, for instance, how everyone has a Unix OS in their pocket (Android phones/tablets and other devices, ipods/iphones/ipads), and most don't even know about it. It was about damn time that it got some mainstream recognition.
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As a matter of curiousity, could someone please answer why Unix and the various derivatives are still so strong?
I think that initially the primary strength of Unix was fork(). It allowed incredibly easy process creation and management. The file system was also incredible. Continued popularity was due to its penetration of the university market followed eventually by the availability of open source versions.
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The UNIX-HATERS Handbook [simson.net] [pdf]
Foreword
By Donald A. Norman
The UNIX-HATERS Handbook? Why? Of what earthly good could it be? Who is the audience? What a perverted idea.
But then again, I have been sitting here in my living room—still wearing my coat—for over an hour now, reading the manuscript. One and one-half hours. What a strange book. But appealing. Two hours. OK, I give up: I like it. It’s a perverse book, but it has an equally perverse appeal. Who would have thought it: Unix, the hacke
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"As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts."
I'm using a Mac right now, almost entirely because underneath all the shiny widgets, I can pull up a terminal window with the shell of my choice (zsh of course; but bash, csh, ksh, sh and tcsh are available straight out of the box) and still use sed, awk, pipes and all those other useful toys to get my
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and congrats... 40 years later their influence is still amazing.
Indeed. If a certain unnamed church recognizes them within the next 359 years it will beat their recognition of Galileo ;-)
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"Ecraser l'infâme " - Voltaire
Thanks to Unix (Score:5, Funny)
...you can download all the Japanese anime tentacle pr0n you ever wanted!
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Instrumental in creating commercial Internet (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the actual Al Gore quote:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Clumsy and self serving wording, yes. Claims to have invented the Internet? No, not at all. He was just saying that his policies helped create the Internet as we know it today, which is somewhat true. What he REALLY did was cosponsor the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 which opened the Internet to commercial traffic.
So, we can really thank Gore for pop-up ads and spam, not the whole Internet.
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Thanks to Unix you can download all the Japanese anime tentacle pr0n you ever wanted!
Amazingly that's also what inspired them to write it in the first place!
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...you can download all the Japanese anime tentacle pr0n you ever wanted!
No, you host the pr0n on Unix. You download and view it using Windows. So really, both operating systems have been instrumental in creating the life we enjoy today.
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>You download and view it using Windows
Maybe _you_ do
What is the Japan Prize? (Score:2)
The Japan prize is actually ONE HUNDRED DARA!!! You win ONE HUNDRED DARA for invent Unix operating system!!! You big winna!!! *insert loud obnoxious noises and strange mascot here* *insert crazy cheering audience here*
Ken Thompson is also at Google? (Score:1)
Google sure has an impressive amount of cool people working there...
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His current work has mostly been on a new programming language called Go [golang.org] (for those who have not heard of it). A young, but thus far impressive systems programming language.
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The real story (Score:5, Funny)
Ken actually used his nifty hack [bell-labs.com] of the C compiler and the login program to break into the computer that stored the committee's votes and flipped his and Steve Ballmer's vote.
Re:The real story (Score:5, Insightful)
No flame-war yet? (Score:1)
I'm surprised to see that some Programming Language flame-war has started yet.
Oh wait, it's still early.
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I'm surprised to see that some Programming Language flame-war has started yet.
Oh wait, it's still early.
COBOL I tell you! It can do anything even grate cheese to a fine shredding! It will also clean your toilet! No other programming languages can do that. HA!
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Wanna start one? They are so much fun...
You want a flame war? (Score:1)
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Flame war? Flame wars are built around personal preferences. You're stating facts. :D
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You jest, but it's actually true. There is no denying that, both on code quality and user interface, vi is vastly superior to any other editor out there. Some people might not like it, some may not want to invest a modicum of time to learn how the tool they use works, but basic fact is that for editing text there is nothing that surpasses vi.
And what's wrong with Notepad? Not only is it simple and elegant (and free as in beer), it also takes one or two minutes to learn and runs on the world's most popular operating system.
And don't forget, it's the program that is used to code our own well-loved Slashdot,
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Best keybindings, maybe
the rest of the story (Score:5, Funny)
Thompson and Ritchie invented Unix and C because they needed a decent programming environment for the PDP-7 to develop their game "Space Wars". To my knowledge, the Bell Labs Space Wars title still hasn't shipped, thus inaugurating the tradition of galactic video game vaporware that continues to this day.
While Unix is great, I looooooove C =) (Score:5, Interesting)
After struggling for years with a dozen programming languages I instantly fell in love with C because I could write tight code which compiled tiny and executed swiftly. Libraries were friendly (compared to Fortran, PL/1, Cobol, etc.) and who could not love linked lists? I liked it so much I bought too copies of The C Programming Language by Dennis Ritchie & Brian Kernighan - one copy for work and one for home.
It's sad to see the crap I have to code in now. =(
Re:While Unix is great, I looooooove C =) (Score:5, Interesting)
The highest accolade for C came from my Computer Music professor, Paul Lansky: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lansky [wikipedia.org] . He did stuff with FORTRAN, which he described as a "clunky" language, and then started moving to C. I can't remember the precise words that he used, but he seemed to get across that programming in C was like composing music for him.
A music professor? Programming in C? Yep, that happens.
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He writes symphonies in C, why not write code in it too?
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That seems a dangerous road, I'm sure he writes symphonies in C# as well...
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What languages do you find yourself programming in now? C++, C#, or ?
Thompson can't check-in code at Google because... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Compliance is definitely not aligned with invention; not saying that non-compliance is sufficient for invention, but seems to me as being necessary.
Re:Thompson can't check-in code at Google because. (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, he's since gone on to work on Go for them, so I'm guessing he did feel a need to be able to check code in, and probably just took the test.
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Anyone here actually using Go? It seems like a sweet little language, basically an update of C that is true to the original spirit of the language (small, close to the hardware). When C was created, garbage collection wasn't a mature technology; now it is, so it makes sense to have it built in. However, Go seems pretty raw, and there are other carefully designed C-like languages (D, objective C) that have a huge head start. It's also a drag that Go's binary interface isn't compatible with C's, and I'm not a
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"Prove his mettle" is not exactly correct. I took the Google C++ coding test. It's not to test that you can code well; it's just to test that you are aware of Google's internal style guidelines (things like indentation, variable naming conventions, and the like). It's a good way to emphasize the importance of stylistically consistent code.
Incidentally, I love this approach because I HATE having to go through messy code. Ugh. For some bizarre reason, master's students with several years of industry expe
One word too many in the title (Score:1)
Article would have been way more awesome without the word "Prize"
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Free Tibet
When you purchase one at regular price
Re:Yeah, they got it right. (Score:4, Informative)
OSX is unix with an aqua graphical user interface/theme.
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I know this, but it's still intrusive. I suppose you kill aqua and live in console most of the time on your Mac, right? That's what I thought. I've tried a lot of window managers; from fast light to evilwm to olvm to fvwm2 to mwm to enlightenment to whatever, and three big DEs and OS X is more intrusive than any of them. The interface/theme is so tightly woven to the user experience that, without it, OS X would be an also-ran. To push its Unix guts as if that was the central power feature is a bit of a red
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That's because most of the Unix-compatible environments honestly... stink. Whether it's because of X or other reasons, I'm not sure.
Which is also why OS X is not just Unix with a pretty face, but is Unix with a pretty well integrated environment. it's a flavor of Unix with some pretty unique attributes
If you want OS X without the UI, get Darwin - it's all the open-source bits. It works and it gets you to the console alright, and without all the Aqua stuff you hate. It also runs on any PC, too. But then agai
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i have no idea what point you were trying to make. you can boot os x into run level 3 and do everything from a console if you want. i was just pointing out that of the 3 things he listed 2 of them were the same. I use my OSX macbook almost identically to how I use my linux laptop. I open up firefox, thunderbird and a terminal and I do all of my "computer stuff" through the terminal.
The next one will go to BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bjarne Stroustrup, that is. After all, C++ has those ++ over C...
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Yeah but they gotta recognize Thompson first as Stroustrup's contributions only increment after C is parsed.
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Bjarne Stroustrup, that is. After all, C++ has those ++ over C...
its one awesomer than c.
Multics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Multics was heavily influential in the development of Unix. The inventor(s) of Multics perhaps deserve as much credit.
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Only up to a point: Many Unnecessarily Large Tables In Core Simultaneously.
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yes. they showed the unix team how not to do things.
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yes. they showed the unix team how not to do things.
Mostly in terms of implementation, not concept. Unix was largely an attempt to keep the good ideas of Multics but without the bloat. (However, if they waited a while, then hardware would catch up to the bloat.)
Platform neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
The C programming language was designed with the same platform-abstracting ideas in mind. Unfortunately later C libraries (past those of ANSI/ISO C) started becoming more and more platform specific (mostly as a result of vendors either doing it "their way" or deliberately tying people to their platform). Later on, Java would grow for the same reason again, but with far more extensive standardized libraries covering what people wanted to do in the Internet Age (sockets, HTTP, multi-threading, platform-independent GUI [Swing with Nimbus looks great and performs well ever since rendering was fully hardware accelerated in 1.6.0_u10]).
Unfortunately we're at the stage where vendors are seeking to close things out again. Apple makes wonderful hardware but their walled garden approach is counterproductive from a global industry perspective (and why they will arguably 'fail' to set the standards for software a second time around, for the same reasons, but will make a colossal amount of money anyway). Google's Android is better, but is still a little bit of a walled garden. Hopefully innovation in profit will move elsewhere ('standardization' of one sort or another eventually comes to almost all technologies) and allow things to settle down in the phone space - and allow the cross-platform ideals of UNIX to once again return. One day I hope that phones are sufficiently powerful (processing and energy/battery life) that developing for them is as simple as for the embedded, desktop and server spaces (which have specialized libraries but are essentially the same these days [if you are using Java]).
Re:Platform neutral (Score:5, Informative)
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The philosophy behind Apple's way here is that their API is tied to their specific user interface concept anyways. They enabled developers to use C++ for the backend if they so choose (with all the downsides that come with it) by extending gcc (and llvm). It's perfectly possible to write games without ever touching an OS-specific API using libraries like GLUT, SDL and Ogre3D.
Cross platform user interfaces are a stupid idea that only programmers could have come up with (I'm saying that as a programmer myself
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This makes no sense whatsoever. Just because you might not be able to construct a good user interface doesn't mean others can't (not just "rich clients", but "filthy rich clients" can and are cross-platform, efficient, and intuitive to use - if you know what you are doing).
hello, world (Score:2, Funny)
If Ritchie had had any clue about how universal his "hello, world" program would become in the world of programming, maybe he and his book's co-author would've spent an extra afternoon kicking around the possibilities:
#include "stdio.h"
int main()
{
printf( "I'm here on the inside, and you're not.\n" );
return 0;
}
Huzzah! (Score:1)
Ah, awards (Score:2)
Not that these two don't deserve it, but I sometimes wonder if accepting awards is like a full-time job for them.
(Currently taking a break from writing C code. In Unix.)
Summary for real nerds: (Score:1)
Skip useless introductions.
Prediction (Score:1)
Inventors of Unix Win (Score:1)
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The Phelps clan found slashdot? There goes the neighborhood.
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4. It has the worlds's worst - and I do mean worst - text editor - VI. VI requires 3 or 4 keystrokes that better editors can do in 1 or 2. Yes I know you can use others. .
As far as I know, 1 or 2 keystrokes with broken finger joints are way slower than 3 or 4 normal keystrokes.