I used to hang around the Bell Labs Murray Hill 1127 lab -- where UNIX originated -- sometimes when I was in the area. A fond memory is sitting at a terminal in there (probably a Blit) working on a program back on my L.A. system over the Net. I ran into a complicated C declaration issue. Sitting a few feet away at the next terminal was Dennis Ritchie (dmr) -- a wonderful guy. Well hell, since he created C, who better to ask about this. So I did, and he instantly offered me an elegant solution I would never have thought of. Years later, it occurred to me that this was the closest I'd ever be to getting advice directly from a god.
@lauren I worked in a peripheral organization at Bell Labs (BL Tech Pubs), not the Murray Hill lab, but every time I needed to talk to someone from MH they were incredibly helpful. And it happened more often than you would think, because I was one of the people running www.bell-labs.com. Love your story.
@lauren That Blit terminal looks pretty neat. I wish things like that had taken off commercially. Guessing they were five figures each, like the Xerox graphical machines?
But having something that looks like a workstation, over a 19.2K modem, is really neat.
@lauren in the mid 90s I worked at a PERL shop. our chief programmer had a problem and asked a question on USENET. Larry Wall answered. he was starstrucked.
@lauren Lovely anecdote. Thank you for sharing this.
I can't overemphasize the comradery back then. On one of my trips out to New Jersey, Dennis and (I believe) Brian Kernighan picked me up at the airport. The UNIX/ARPANET/Internet world was relatively tiny compared with what it would grow to be. An entirely different age. And this isn't just some old guy looking through rose-tinted hindsight talking now. Trust me on this.
Wow. Was this in the 1970s?
@Phosphenes Most of my trips East for this stuff were probably in the late 70s to mid-80s period. That's also when I had my experience at the World Trade Center when I was presenting at an early Usenix conference at CUNY.
@lauren I'm curious what the problem was and the solution proposed
@oblomov Some horrific function pointer mess. I don't recall the details ...
@lauren @oblomov i miss function pointers and i miss C, having been drawn into web stuff for a long time.
I learnt a lot from a guy who worked directly with Stroustrup on defining the C++ standard. Such humble guys, you could walk up to them and ask them anything.
The rude MBA takeover from engineering across industries is terrible.
Glad to know that dmr's home page is still being preserved, even though it tends to move around from time to time. Currently it's at Nokia.
@lauren Very envious.
Awesome! I have a PC case autographed by Phil Zimmermann. I was slightly shocked that I was the only person who brought the cover and a sharpie to a talk of his.
@lauren that’s so cool. My grandpa (elec engineer) used to work at Bell Labs until about 1970 or so.
@jeffzugale I spent time at three of the BTL facilities: Murray Hill (the most celebrated site), Whippany, and Holmdel (the Holmdel building made famous recently by the "Severance" TV series). You could feel the history at MH everywhere.
@lauren IIRC Grandpa was recruited straight out of MIT in the 20s and spent his entire work life there. In part I owe my existence to that. Crazy, right?
@jeffzugale That how Bell Labs worked in its heyday, and why it's effective destruction is such a loss to humanity.
