1237c90455a0
c_echo



Hello Jerry - 

Not actually accessing this echo via a FIDO BBS seems to impose
no need to address your replies to the person you are replying
to. 

It would be helpful if you could use a FIDO BBS to access the
echo and use real names. Where I come from addressing a person
as "You" would be considered rude behaviour. 

JC> [ ... ] 

>>> It was presented sooner, for those who paid any attention. 

>> I have no formal training as a librarian and don't read the
>> preface or any of the other junk on those pages 

--8<--cut 

JC> It's your loss -- as you might guess from the bit I quoted,
JC> the introductory material is often quite interesting
JC> (though I can't remember much that seems to me like it
JC> would mean much to a librarian). 

Library of congress numbers and others. 

>> Not known to me. It's still K&R not R&K. 

JC> Which has little to do with anything -- many fine books
JC> about C don't list dmr as an author at all. 

What is a "fine book"? A pretty cover, lots of pictures? IMO if
the book fails to mention who the authors of C are it's not
"fine" it's superficial and I would question how much research
actually went into producing the book. 

JC> I've never seen a specific reason given for Brian Kernighan
JC> being listed first, but they might easily have simply put
JC> them in alphabetical order. It's also been pointed out that
JC> Brian Kernighan was the larger contributor to the book, if
JC> not to the language at all. 

Information from Kernighan would lead me to think otherwise: 

============= 

LJ: There are a lot of different areas in today's IT world:
platforms, OSes, languages, hardware. In what areas do you
consider yourself to be an expert? 

BK: I used to be an expert in document preparation systems,
such as troff (which ran on UNIX), and in tools for
typesetting. I maintained and enhanced troff for a long time,
and I wrote a variety of other text processing tools, including
eqn, for typesett ting mathematics. That was one major piece of
my research for a long time. I was also pretty knowledgeable
about such things as programming style, especially in C. I'm
not an expert in anything now, though. There are too many
things to know, and it gets e easier to forget as one gets
older. 

LJ: What was your part in the birth and destiny of the C
language? 

BK: I had no part in the birth of C, period. It's entirely
Dennis Ritchie's work. I wrote a tutorial on how to use C for
people at Bell Labs, and I twisted Dennis's arm into writing a
book with me. But, if he had been so motivated, he certainly
could have done it without help. He's a superb writer, as one
can tell from the C reference manuals, which are his prose,
untouched. I've profited a great deal from being part of the
book, and I treasure Dennis as a friend, but I didn't have
anything to do with C. 

============= 

Please note that last sentence. ;-) 

Any of this sound at all familiar? 

JC> [ ... ] 

>>> Another point many people find interesting is that dmr
>>> didn't design the I/O library either. That was the work of
>>> Mike Lesk (whose relative obscurity I believe is a cosmic
>>> punishment for having invented gets). 

>> Seems that there were many 'contributors' but one person got
>> the lion's share of the credit even though that was unfair
>> to the others. 

JC> Another place you miss out by skipping over the
JC> introductory material. I suppose Dennis may be _given_ most
JC> of the credit, but he's quite careful not to _claim_ it
JC> exclusively -- just for example, K&R1 names 26 other people
JC> to whom they give thanks for various assistance (and yes,
JC> Mike Lesk is among those). In the second edition, they
JC> reproduce the preface to the first edition, and add another
JC> as well, containing another list of 29 contributors (though
JC> there's considerable duplication between those two lists). 

JC> Dennis also spent quite a bit of his HOPL II presentation
JC> giving credit to quite a number of other people, some
JC> well-known (e.g. Ken Thompson, Rob Pike) others perhaps
JC> less so (e.g. Bonnie Thompson, Bob Morris, Alan Snyder) as
JC> well as some who are well-known to those versed in UNIX
JC> lore, but probably less so elsewhere (e.g. Doug MdIlroy and
JC> Steve Johnson). 

Yes, actors gush lists of names when accpeting their awards.
It's an established form of psuedo humility. 

JC> Just FWIW, the language designer being the second author of
JC> the manual is hardly new or unique -- e.g. once upon a time
JC> many of us used "Jensen and Wirth Pascal", which was
JC> defined by Niklaus Wirth, not Kathleen Jensen. 

While fiddling with OBERON I recall reading that Wirth had a
colleague who collaborated in much of what Wirth had done. Not
sure of the specifics but he wasn't flying solo I know that
much. I'm not referring to Jensen, it was a male colleague as I
recall it and I think older than Wirth. Another college professor
but I'm not even certain they were at the same college.  I wasn't
taking notes. :-)

JC> Of course, mentioning that makes me feel a bit old -- the
JC> time when owning a copy of the _Pascal User Manual and
JC> Report_ marked me as young and progressive is long past! 

OBERON came after Modula II as the next progression of that
language. OBERON has much of interest but is controlled by
middle aged PhD types who seem content to keep it to
themselves. :-\ 

I still have a W31 install of OBERON from another campus
(different group) but haven't tried to use it for anything as
yet.

As a former PASCAL user you might find OBERON of interest to
you.  If nothing else, it's different. :-)

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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