Steve Jobs had such a way with words. I personally love this quote:
"This is not a field where one paints a painting which will be looked at for centuries...This is a field where one does his work and in ten years it is obsolete."
I loved the metaphor:
"It's sort of like a sentiment of rocks. You're building up a mountain and you get to contribute your little layer of sedimentary rock to make the mountain that much higher. No one will see it, but they will stand on it."
I think this is so true. Tech is about building on what others have done. Picking up where on person left off. It's a never ending cycle.
I also like the line "it'll be appreciated by that rare geologist". In 100 years when historians are looking back on the tech boom that we are currently living in, it'll be very interesting to see what goes down in history books as the most influential invention, device, software etc that really started this revolution.
Okay, I appreciate that Ritchie was a genius and that C was revolutionary and is foundational to modern computing.
But seriously, C arrays not having bounds checks has probably caused more security disasters than anything else in the history of computing, with the possible exception of end-users. Was there a good reason for this, and if so, what was it?
C was introduced in 1972, that's a year before I was born (and it had been in development for a couple years prior).
The first computer I programmed on ran at 1 mhz and had 64 kilobytes of RAM.
Is it really so hard to see why C didn't historically have bounds checking? Bounds checking was pretty controversial in languages even as late as the early 2000s because of the runtime cost.
It's interesting you say your first sentence there, because I was thinking exactly the same thing: Steve was always so good with words. I think that, combined with his impeccable taste for new product design and iterations, was his greatest strength.
Oh absolutely. There are so many classy lines from him. And some of these lines are going to impact our industry for years to come.
Take for example: The 'Post-PC era'?
Damn just those three words. They paint an altogether new story that is going to be written all over again! It gives an excitement and pumps blood back into what our industry does best - wow the users.
> "This is not a field where one paints a painting which will be looked at for centuries...This is a field where one does his work and in ten years it is obsolete."
"This is not a field where one paints a painting which will be looked at for centuries...This is a field where one does his work and in ten years it is obsolete."
I loved the metaphor:
"It's sort of like a sentiment of rocks. You're building up a mountain and you get to contribute your little layer of sedimentary rock to make the mountain that much higher. No one will see it, but they will stand on it."
I think this is so true. Tech is about building on what others have done. Picking up where on person left off. It's a never ending cycle.
I also like the line "it'll be appreciated by that rare geologist". In 100 years when historians are looking back on the tech boom that we are currently living in, it'll be very interesting to see what goes down in history books as the most influential invention, device, software etc that really started this revolution.