Talk:Ken Thompson/Archive 1

Archive 1

other Thompson info

Thompson also did some work on regular expressions back in the 1960s. Although regular expressions are very old in theory and had even been used on computers a little before Thompson, I think Thompson can take most of the credit (and blame) for the particular form and syntax normally used now. Also the notion that text editors and other text utilities MUST have regular expressions even if very primitive in other ways, may be largely his.

Thompson was also well known for strange, terse, and somewhat wise sayings. Maybe there is a collection somewhere. "These concepts fill a much needed gap." is my favourite. Also very lightweight documentation, programming comments, and error messages.

Interesting tidbit: some of the Linux code SCO claims, http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-000/imh0.jpg, appears to have been written by him. http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V6/usr/sys/ken/malloc.c.html. This code has been released under a BSD-style license.

:( Not in English. On another point, should this article be called Ken Thompson or Kenneth Thompson (which currently redirects to this page)? The other language Wikipedias call it the latter. Enochlau 04:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree his work on regular expressions should be mentioned, but I don't have enough details right now at hand. I have added some of his quotes(mostly from the Plan 9 from Bell Labs fortunes file, I will try to find more. And it's "Ken"(even the "Thompson" is optional), I never heard anyone say "Kenneth" Lost Goblin 21:27, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

He doesn't have an entry in wikiquote? This is an oversight to say the least. 208.47.17.91 23:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Awards

If anyone wants to there a list of more awards Ken revieved here. Once completed the awards section can be shared in between k&r. ems (not to be confused with the nonexistant pre-dating account by the same name) 05:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Redirect

Why has been the article Ken Thompson moved? Specially this has broken links all over the place. I'm OK with having a disambiguation page, but not with moving the current page, specially not without some discussion first. --Lost Goblin 17:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Yah, maybe there should have been a Ken Thompson (disambiguation) page instead of the page move. In any case someone needs to fix the dozens of links to the old Ken Thompson page. Some of them are now double disamb pages, e.g., Ken, which is ugly. Also, this page needs to have a pointer to the disambiguation page, as does the hockey player. There's already a pointer at Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet, but the for template is arguably preferrable to ad-hoc text for such pointers. A bit of a mess. —johndburger 03:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I personally prefer moving it back. The general preference is for having the well-known one at the article name, and having the disambig page elsewhere. enochlau (talk) 04:20, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and will save tons of confusion and broken external links --Lost Goblin 14:59, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I buy that. (BTW, I asked Sonjaaa, who did the move, to join this discussion yesterday.) —johndburger 03:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

As an admin who can delete stuff, I'll have a go at fixing it if there are no objections to doing so. enochlau (talk) 11:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

the creation of C, which is, as of 2006, the world's most used programming language[citation needed].

A Google search for "most used programming language" gets references to COBOL, Java, HTML, and others as well as C and C++. So the claim that C is "the world's most used programming language" would be disputed at best. C may very well the world's most used programming language, but without a strong reference supporting the claim, I think we shouldn't make it. I'm softening the statement to "one of the world's ..." and removing the "citation needed" marker. If you think I'm out of line, change it back.

Tbarron 00:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• I appreciate your work. I suspect that it IS the most used programming language, but without a citation, your actions are right on. Wikibofh_(talk) 00:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Here is one source, although to be honest, I don't believe it is citation quality. [1] Wikibofh_(talk) 01:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

chess endgames

For the record, not all 6-piece endgame tables have been created. I'm not sure if this is what the article is claiming, but it's unclear at best.

MULTICS inconsistent with other info

Other wikipedia pages mention that Thompson was working for AT&T (though perhaps not at Bell Labs?) while working on MULTICS, and that in fact he continued working on it even after AT&T had pulled out of the project, because there was a game he liked, and that this work is what led to the creation of unix. -- Akb4 15:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)