31 Jul
2020
31 Jul
'20
12:03 a.m.
The Computer History Museum has an interesting blog post about
Dennis Ritchie's lost dissertation:
https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertat…
Interesting fact is that Dennis never received his PhD because he failed
to provide a bound copy of his dissertation to the Harvard library.
Kirk McKusick
31 Jul
31 Jul
12:26 a.m.
On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 4:23 PM Kirk McKusick <mckusick(a)mckusick.com> wrote:
The Computer History Museum has an interesting blog
post about
Dennis Ritchie's lost dissertation:
https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertat…
Interesting fact is that Dennis never received his PhD because he failed
to provide a bound copy of his dissertation to the Harvard library.
It would seem fitting to try to get this posthumously corrected.
If we provided said bound copy, does anyone have any Harvard contacts that
could facilitate?
Royce
--
Royce Williams
Tech Solvency
12:30 a.m.
I understood from Mike Anshel that he was rather proud of this, though of
course I never asked Dennis myself.
I wonder if Harvard would posthumously enter it in the books if someone
dropped off a bound copy now?
I imagine somehow Dennis wouldn't appreciate that.
On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 8:23 PM Kirk McKusick <mckusick(a)mckusick.com> wrote:
The Computer History Museum has an interesting blog
post about
Dennis Ritchie's lost dissertation:
https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertat…
Interesting fact is that Dennis never received his PhD because he failed
to provide a bound copy of his dissertation to the Harvard library.
Kirk McKusick
12:36 a.m.
It seems odd to me that nobody seems to have given him an honorary PhD.
Perhaps offers were made, but declined?
-r
1 Aug
1 Aug
7:14 a.m.
Hoi.
[2020-07-30 20:30] Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com>
I understood from Mike Anshel that he was rather proud of this, [...]
I once read that someone is famous when people omit the titles,
because they add nothing to the name, but rather would smaller it.
A good example is Albert Einstein. Who cares what titles he has.
Another is Dennis Ritchie. What does it matter what degrees, titles,
whatever he has? -- He's already a genius!
meillo
2:13 p.m.
On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 09:14:36AM +0200, markus schnalke wrote:
Hoi.
[2020-07-30 20:30] Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com>
My dad wasn't famous, but he had a PhD in physics. He never asked people
to call him Dr McVoy. As we grew up and realized he could be called that
we asked him why not. He said it sounds fancy, the only time he used it
was when he wanted a table at a crowded restaurant (which was very rare,
Madison didn't pay him very well).
Somehow that stuck with me and I've always been sort of wary of people
who use their title. The people I admire never did.
Someone on the list said that they thought Dennis wouldn't appreciate
it if we got his PhD official. I couldn't put my finger on it at the
time, but I agreed. And I think it is because the people who are really
great don't need or want the fancy title. I may be over thinking it,
but Dennis does not need the title, it does nothing to make his legacy
better, his legacy is way way more than that title.
Which is a long ramble to say I agree with Markus.
I understood from Mike Anshel that he was rather proud of this, [...]
I once read that someone is famous when people omit the titles,
because they add nothing to the name, but rather would smaller it.
A good example is Albert Einstein. Who cares what titles he has.
Another is Dennis Ritchie. What does it matter what degrees, titles,
whatever he has? -- He's already a genius! 
3:08 p.m.
The use of honorifics was subtly discouraged at the Labs. I never saw a
policy statement, but nobody I knew used "Dr" (except those in the medical
department), even though the place was crawling with doctoral degrees.
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 10:14 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 09:14:36AM +0200, markus
schnalke wrote:
Hoi.
[2020-07-30 20:30] Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com>
My dad wasn't famous, but he had a PhD in physics. He never asked people
to call him Dr McVoy. As we grew up and realized he could be called that
we asked him why not. He said it sounds fancy, the only time he used it
was when he wanted a table at a crowded restaurant (which was very rare,
Madison didn't pay him very well).
Somehow that stuck with me and I've always been sort of wary of people
who use their title. The people I admire never did.
Someone on the list said that they thought Dennis wouldn't appreciate
it if we got his PhD official. I couldn't put my finger on it at the
time, but I agreed. And I think it is because the people who are really
great don't need or want the fancy title. I may be over thinking it,
but Dennis does not need the title, it does nothing to make his legacy
better, his legacy is way way more than that title.
Which is a long ramble to say I agree with Markus.
I understood from Mike Anshel that he was rather proud of this, [...]
I once read that someone is famous when people omit the titles,
because they add nothing to the name, but rather would smaller it.
A good example is Albert Einstein. Who cares what titles he has.
Another is Dennis Ritchie. What does it matter what degrees, titles,
whatever he has? -- He's already a genius!
4:43 p.m.
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 11:09 AM John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The use of honorifics was subtly discouraged at the
Labs. I never saw a
policy statement, but nobody I knew used "Dr" (except those in the medical
department), even though the place was crawling with doctoral degrees.
My officemate has a PhD and told me a funny story. Someone (not him) from
his program graduated and shortly thereafter flew somewhere. Realizing that
they could put "Dr" as an honorific when booking their flight, this person
did so. Shortly after take-off, a flight attendant approached the
newly-minted PhD and said something along the lines of, "Uh, Doctor? We
have a passenger we think may be having a heart attack..." This person had
to quickly explain that they were not "that kind of doctor" but rather
"the
other kind." The nonplussed flight attendant advised this person not to use
"Dr" as a title when booking future flights. As an aside, I have a close
friend who is a medical doctor and she's been on _five_ separate flights
where the flight attendants have asked for medical assistance from
qualified passengers: usually it's a heart-attack or an allergic reaction.
As a result, she now prescribes herself an epi pen and keeps it in her bag.
I think there are times when titles are contextually appropriate: perhaps
on the byline of a paper, in accordance with the editorial guidelines of a
publication or conference proceedings or something, or perhaps when
teaching a class in an academic setting. Occasionally I teach a session of
a graduate course somewhere or another; less occasionally I get emails from
students who attended the lecture. I always find it flattering and amusing
when they variously refer to me as "Dr" or "Prof": I am neither,
though I
understand that in academic settings that's simply the norm.
About half of the people in the immediate vicinity of my office have PhDs.
When my kids have come to visit, I try to use titles and last names.
Sometimes this gets them confused, "why did I have to call that person Dr
So-and-so but you call her Lucy?" "Because you're six and I'm her
colleague." But otherwise everyone is on a first-name basis; if a PhD tried
to assert use of their title outside of some context where it's explicitly
relevant, I don't imagine it would go well and that person would likely not
remain in their position long due to a cultural mismatch.
A particular impedance mismatch is when someone has a PhD in a completely
unrelated field: It's not unheard of for someone with a degree in the
humanities to work in software. I once briefly met someone who had worked
on MVS as a systems programmer, but who had a PhD in study of the Japanese
language. I doubt he insisted on being called "Doctor" at work.
- Dan C.
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 10:14 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 09:14:36AM +0200, markus
schnalke wrote:
Hoi.
[2020-07-30 20:30] Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com>
My dad wasn't famous, but he had a PhD in physics. He never asked people
to call him Dr McVoy. As we grew up and realized he could be called that
we asked him why not. He said it sounds fancy, the only time he used it
was when he wanted a table at a crowded restaurant (which was very rare,
Madison didn't pay him very well).
Somehow that stuck with me and I've always been sort of wary of people
who use their title. The people I admire never did.
Someone on the list said that they thought Dennis wouldn't appreciate
it if we got his PhD official. I couldn't put my finger on it at the
time, but I agreed. And I think it is because the people who are really
great don't need or want the fancy title. I may be over thinking it,
but Dennis does not need the title, it does nothing to make his legacy
better, his legacy is way way more than that title.
Which is a long ramble to say I agree with Markus.
I understood from Mike Anshel that he was rather proud of this, [...]
I once read that someone is famous when people omit the titles,
because they add nothing to the name, but rather would smaller it.
A good example is Albert Einstein. Who cares what titles he has.
Another is Dennis Ritchie. What does it matter what degrees, titles,
whatever he has? -- He's already a genius! 
5:21 p.m.
long story:
i have a friend with a phd in computer science.
his wife has a phd in chaucer.
i was having lunch with them when they were
opening a bank account and were discussing
what was to go on the checks.
she wanted "dr & dr X", he said he would let
her have her "dr", but insisted on "joe" -
she hit the ceiling, "dr & joe X" wouldn't do.
they both were very mad and "decided" on "dr
and mr X."
i am not sure what they put on the checks, but
the best part of the story is when they left.
they stomped out of the diner, very angry,
and bumped into someone coming in. the guy
coming in said "watch out asshole" and joe
replied without hesitation "that's dr asshole
to you."
another friend, this time by name, bob (h) morris,
would call me "boy" because he and i were the
only non-phds within several floors at the labs.
so, about dennis. he was always ambiguous about
the title. from that, i gather that, since he
put the time in, he wanted people to think he
had a phd. but he never used the title because
of the stigma around bell labs in so doing.
so i would drop this discussion about him, which
draws attention to the fact, leave it ambiguous
and just call him "dennis."
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 9:44 AM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 11:09 AM John P. Linderman
<jpl.jpl(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
The use of honorifics was subtly discouraged at
the Labs. I never saw a
policy statement, but nobody I knew used "Dr" (except those in the medical
department), even though the place was crawling with doctoral degrees.
My officemate has a PhD and told me a funny story. Someone (not him) from
his program graduated and shortly thereafter flew somewhere. Realizing that
they could put "Dr" as an honorific when booking their flight, this person
did so. Shortly after take-off, a flight attendant approached the
newly-minted PhD and said something along the lines of, "Uh, Doctor? We
have a passenger we think may be having a heart attack..." This person had
to quickly explain that they were not "that kind of doctor" but rather
"the
other kind." The nonplussed flight attendant advised this person not to use
"Dr" as a title when booking future flights. As an aside, I have a close
friend who is a medical doctor and she's been on _five_ separate flights
where the flight attendants have asked for medical assistance from
qualified passengers: usually it's a heart-attack or an allergic reaction.
As a result, she now prescribes herself an epi pen and keeps it in her bag.
I think there are times when titles are contextually appropriate: perhaps
on the byline of a paper, in accordance with the editorial guidelines of a
publication or conference proceedings or something, or perhaps when
teaching a class in an academic setting. Occasionally I teach a session of
a graduate course somewhere or another; less occasionally I get emails from
students who attended the lecture. I always find it flattering and amusing
when they variously refer to me as "Dr" or "Prof": I am neither,
though I
understand that in academic settings that's simply the norm.
About half of the people in the immediate vicinity of my office have PhDs.
When my kids have come to visit, I try to use titles and last names.
Sometimes this gets them confused, "why did I have to call that person Dr
So-and-so but you call her Lucy?" "Because you're six and I'm her
colleague." But otherwise everyone is on a first-name basis; if a PhD tried
to assert use of their title outside of some context where it's explicitly
relevant, I don't imagine it would go well and that person would likely not
remain in their position long due to a cultural mismatch.
A particular impedance mismatch is when someone has a PhD in a completely
unrelated field: It's not unheard of for someone with a degree in the
humanities to work in software. I once briefly met someone who had worked
on MVS as a systems programmer, but who had a PhD in study of the Japanese
language. I doubt he insisted on being called "Doctor" at work.
- Dan C.
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 10:14 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 09:14:36AM +0200, markus schnalke wrote:
>> > Hoi.
>> >
>> > [2020-07-30 20:30] Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com>
>> > >
>> > > I understood from Mike Anshel that he was rather proud of this, [...]
>> >
>> > I once read that someone is famous when people omit the titles,
>> > because they add nothing to the name, but rather would smaller it.
>> > A good example is Albert Einstein. Who cares what titles he has.
>> >
>> > Another is Dennis Ritchie. What does it matter what degrees, titles,
>> > whatever he has? -- He's already a genius!
>>
>> My dad wasn't famous, but he had a PhD in physics. He never asked people
>> to call him Dr McVoy. As we grew up and realized he could be called that
>> we asked him why not. He said it sounds fancy, the only time he used it
>> was when he wanted a table at a crowded restaurant (which was very rare,
>> Madison didn't pay him very well).
>>
>> Somehow that stuck with me and I've always been sort of wary of people
>> who use their title. The people I admire never did.
>>
>> Someone on the list said that they thought Dennis wouldn't appreciate
>> it if we got his PhD official. I couldn't put my finger on it at the
>> time, but I agreed. And I think it is because the people who are really
>> great don't need or want the fancy title. I may be over thinking it,
>> but Dennis does not need the title, it does nothing to make his legacy
>> better, his legacy is way way more than that title.
>>
>> Which is a long ramble to say I agree with Markus.
>>
> 
5:34 p.m.
so i would drop this discussion about him, which
draws attention to the fact, leave it ambiguous
and just call him "dennis."
the final word on the issue. Thanks a lot Ken.
<br>_________________________________________________________________<br><strong>Gesendet
mit Firemail.de - Freemail</strong>
5:48 p.m.
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 12:44 PM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 1, 2020 at 11:09 AM John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think this is true, or at least used to be true, everywhere between the
East and California, where it was typical for tertiary students to address
their teachers with the ordinary titles of Mr., Mrs., and Miss (now Ms.
too, most likely). I once heard of an organization named "The Society for
Calling University Professors 'Mister'".
Occasionally I teach a session of a graduate course somewhere or another;
The use of honorifics was subtly discouraged at
the Labs.
less occasionally I get emails from students who
attended the lecture. I
always find it flattering and amusing when they variously refer to me as
"Dr" or "Prof": I am neither,
I have a standard reply to that when it comes from people who know nothing
about me: "Neither doctor nor master nor even bachelor am I, but plain
John of New Avalon. :-)" New Avalon is of course more usually known as
the Big Apple. I use that and my middle name as my Twitter username (now
long idle), @woldemar_avalon.
About half of the people in the immediate vicinity of
my office have PhDs.
I have four siblings and two parents with doctorates, while I myself remain
untitled (as shown above). When I was a kid and answered the phone, and
someone asked for either Professor Cowan or Doctor Cowan, I would carefully
ask "Do you mean Professor Thomas or Professor Marianne?" My mother
wanted me to say "Do you want my mother or my father?", but I rejected this
as below the dignity of a telephone receptionist.
A particular impedance mismatch is when someone has a PhD in a completely
unrelated field:
Many people have advanced degrees in English (or another language) or
library science but also a programming background: they tend to wind up in
the digital humanities because their original fields aren't hiring.
John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
I should say generally that that marriage was best auspiced, for the
achievement of happiness, which contemplated a relation between a man and a
woman in which the independence was equal, the dependence mutual, and the
obligations reciprocal.
8:24 p.m.
John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The use of honorifics was subtly discouraged at the
Labs. I never saw a
policy statement, but nobody I knew used "Dr" (except those in the medical
department), even though the place was crawling with doctoral degrees.
Yes -- but their administration was anything but egalitarian or
meritocratic. I know someone who had immense trouble getting inside the
door at the Labs because "all" he had was a bachelor's degree. Let
their character be judged by how they treated a stranger.
Sign me proud to have succeeded in life with no degrees at all,
John Gilmore
31 Jul
31 Jul
12:35 a.m.
"My graduate school experience convinced me that I was not smart enough to
be an expert in the theory of algorithms and also that I liked procedural
languages better than functional ones."
Amen to that. Me too, I tried functional languages and my head hurt. C
seems so natural to me.
On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 05:03:24PM -0700, Kirk McKusick wrote:
The Computer History Museum has an interesting blog
post about
Dennis Ritchie's lost dissertation:
https://computerhistory.org/blog/discovering-dennis-ritchies-lost-dissertat…
Interesting fact is that Dennis never received his PhD because he failed
to provide a bound copy of his dissertation to the Harvard library.
Kirk McKusick
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
12:54 a.m.
On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 8:36 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
Amen to that. Me too, I tried functional languages and my head hurt. C
seems so natural to me.
IMO impure functional languages like Common Lisp, ML, Scheme, and the
somewhat ironically named Pure language are straightforward extensions of
imperative programming: you can make your code less imperative without
being completely deprived of it. All of these are tail-recursive (formally
CL is not, but most implementations are) which means that recursive loops
become non-recursive gotos, and for/do-loops wind up being pure without you
noticing.
John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
If a traveler were informed that such a man [as Lord John Russell] was
leader of the House of Commons, he may well begin to comprehend how the
Egyptians worshiped an insect. --Benjamin Disraeli
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13 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
Dan Cross -
John Cowan -
John Gilmore -
John P. Linderman -
Ken Thompson -
Kirk McKusick -
Larry McVoy -
markus schnalke -
Rich Morin -
Royce Williams -
Thomas Paulsen