UNIX Creators To Receive Pender Award

jellings writes "Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thompson will be recipients of this years' Harold Pender Award, given "to an outstanding member of the engineering profession who has achieved distinction by significant contributions to society" by the University Of Pennsylvania School of Engineering. Under the direction of Pender, ENIAC was born, and under Ritchie and Thompson, UNIX was born."

Only now?

[Randolpho]

So why haven't they already been awarded years ago?

Re:Only now?

[xenocide2]

Probably because the lingering ghosts of Operating Systems past have left the public eye. UNIX wasn't always considered the big-iron behemoth it is today. There was a time when people percieved UNIX in the same way the typical slashdotter views MS Windows today. "The good news is that in 1995 we will have a good operating system and programming language; the bad news is that they will be Unix and C++." [jwz.org]

The legends of UNIX hold that original version was put together hastily (the filesystem was designed overnight), and for the express purposes of playing spacewar. How much of that is true and how much comes from lying MUTLICS sympathists, I'll never know. But only with time has UNIX become something worthwhile. Perhaps the award is for being the first decent example of an iterative development cycle?

Re:Only now?

[Randolpho]

Interesting article. Thanks! :)

Re:Only now?

[MagikSlinger]

It was nice to read this article again; I had only read part of it before. What I like is a LISP fetishist owning up to the problems of his language community then encouraging them to be (gasps of horror) practical.

Re:Only now?

[AtrN]

They were. Read all about it. [bell-labs.com]

I would expect...

[Creepy Crawler]

Torvalds, Cox, and Stallman get that similar award.

After all, the free software was pushed by Torvalds and Cox by providing a free Nix under the gpl that pushes software in an open way.

And of course, Stallman, for writing Gnu C. No other FOSS comiler existed for C until he made it. And it was used in many unixes, NExT, Linux, *BSD, MacOS 10, and Linux with compilers also for WIndows. I'd say he would qualify for it too.

Re:I would expect...

[anomalous cohort]

I see your point. Ritchie and Thompson made significant contributions to the Society of Engineering and to telcos but not to general Society (unless you want to count all those telephone switches that ran off of some variation of Unix). It was Torvalds, et. al, that brought Unix to the masses.

I remember buying Microport Unix for the PC back in the late 80's for $1000. There certainly wasn't going to be a lot of wide adoption at that price.

Ho Ho, Mr. Gates!

[kurosawdust]

stick that in your pipe and grep it!

SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't this really go to SCO? They own Unix and all derived works.

In other news....

[orthogonal]

In other news, SCO's Darl McBride plans to rush the stage during the presentation, grab the Pender award, and bill UPenn, Dennis Ritchie, and Kenneth Thompson $699 each before running off with the award.

McBride will then issue a press release claiming that the award was always his, but Ritchie and Thompson copied his citation for the award and scratched his named out, inserting theirs. The press release will explain that the original citation is "double secret", but can be revealed to anyone willing sign an NDA and read it in a Greek font.

The next morning, McBride will attempt to dump the award on Wall Street for 2000% of its appraised value.

Re:In other news....

[mugnyte]

..AND sue UofP for their obvious participation in the outlaw OSS movement to discredit SCO's invention: UNIX, and all things command line.

Actually, they just release PR about the lawsuit, but it never gets filed. As the stock rises, the overseas mansions fill up with hummers and marble and gold. The angry legions approach Utah driving truckloads of evidence to the courthouse. Darl stares down from the steel monolith, smirking. In SCO-issue sunglasses, the admin knocks on his door. "Your helicopter is waiting, Mr McBride."

But when will they be awarded......

[FrostyWheaton]

The first annual Mongomery Burns award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence??

Roseanne Rosannadanna says...

[SEWilco]

I think the Bender Award is more important due to its indication of the continuing growth of Unix. Because Bender looks further ahead to the future, he knows the value of Unix. It apparently also will survive both global warming and nuclear winter. But I'm not sure how much of an honor it is to get an award from Bender.

This is perfect timing!

[Roofus]

I've nearly completed my port of Unix to ENIAC! Thus, the circle will be completed.

Engineers

[__aafkqj3628]

So, is this proof that programmers ARE engineers?