[TUHS] [tuhs] Dennis Ritchie's couch

[Rob Pike]

In no way did I mean to diminish the work. Instead, I was admiring how our
knowledge of the field has continued to grow through the work they have
done.

-rob


On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 1:03 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> You do, I don't.  I'm not alone in my lack of understanding.
>
> I think that all the things that yacc solved, Steve gets some kudos.
> I've used it a bunch and I did not need to be as smart as you or
> Steve to get the job done.
>
> You getting past that is cool but it doesn't make his work less.
>
> On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 10:37:45AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote:
> > And today, we understand parsing so well we don't need yacc.
> >
> > -rob
> >
> >
> > On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 10:20 AM Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe at math.utah.edu
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > The last article of the latest issue of the Communications of the ACM
> > > that appeared electronically earlier today is a brief interview with
> > > this year's ACM Turing Award winners, Al Aho and Jeff Ullman.
> > >
> > > The article is
> > >
> > >         Last byte: Shaping the foundations of programming languages
> > >         https://doi.org/10.1145/3460442
> > >         Comm. ACM 64(6), 120, 119, June 2021.
> > >
> > > and it includes a picture of the two winners sitting on Dennis
> > > Ritchie's couch.
> > >
> > > I liked this snippet from Jeff Ullman, praising fellow list member
> > > Steve Johnson's landmark program, yacc:
> > >
> > > >> ...
> > > >> At the time of the first Fortran compiler, it took several
> > > >> person-years to write a parser.  By the time yacc came around,
> > > >> you could do it in an afternoon.
> > > >> ...
> > >
> > >
> > >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > - Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254
> > >     -
> > > - University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148
> > >     -
> > > - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail:
> > > beebe at math.utah.edu  -
> > > - 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org
> > > beebe at computer.org -
> > > - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL:
> > > http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
> > >
> > >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy                  lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
>
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