The Unsung Engineer vs. The Tech Celebrity

Description

A two-panel comparison meme contrasting Apple co-founder Steve Jobs with computer scientist Dennis Ritchie. The left panel features a photo of Steve Jobs with text above reading 'Become a Hipster Sell Stolen Ideas' and text below reading 'Praised by Media as Jesus of Computing'. The right panel shows a photo of Dennis Ritchie with text above reading 'Invent C and UNIX' and text below reading 'Ignored'. The bottom section of the image details their respective impacts: 'Without Steve Jobs...we would have: No iProducts, No over expensive laptops'. In contrast, 'Without Dennis Ritchie...we would have: No Windows, No Unix, No C, No Programs, A large setback in computing, No Generic-text Languages, We would all read in Binary..'. A concluding line notes, 'They died in the same year and the same month but it seems only few notice the death of Dennis Ritchie compared to Steve Jobs.' The meme is a commentary popular within the developer community that foundational engineering contributions, like Ritchie's creation of the C language and the Unix operating system, are often overlooked by the public in favor of charismatic product visionaries like Jobs, despite Ritchie's work being arguably more fundamental to modern computing itself

Common Tags

Apple AppleProducts DeveloperHumor TechHistory OperatingSystems CFamilyLanguages LanguageComparison IndustrySatire

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick The media praises the architect who designed the beautiful penthouse, while the engineers who designed the foundation, steel, and concrete that prevent the whole thing from collapsing are just a footnote in the building permit

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

The media praises the architect who designed the beautiful penthouse, while the engineers who designed the foundation, steel, and concrete that prevent the whole thing from collapsing are just a footnote in the building permit
Anonymous

Funny how the black-turtleneck showman tweaks a bezel and gets a standing ovation, while the grey-bearded coder who gave our kernels their mother tongue is still just a “warning: unused brilliance” in the media’s build log
Anonymous

The irony that the person who created the foundation that makes all modern operating systems possible got less media coverage than the person who put a pretty UI on top of BSD - proving once again that in tech, the closer you are to the metal, the further you are from the spotlight
Anonymous

The irony is profound: one man gave us the C language that powers everything from kernels to embedded systems, and UNIX - the foundation of Linux, macOS, Android, and countless servers. The other gave us beautifully marketed products built on top of that foundation. Yet the media canonized the marketer while the architect of modern computing passed almost unnoticed. It's the ultimate metaphor for our industry: everyone celebrates the UI, but nobody remembers the syscalls that make it possible. Ritchie's legacy is literally running on the device you're using to read this - his work is so fundamental it's invisible, which is perhaps the highest compliment in systems programming, even if it means dying in obscurity
Anonymous

Press loves the keynote; production loves C and UNIX’s ABI - it’s the thing keeping the shiny demo from segfaulting mid-applause
Anonymous

In tech, the keynote gets the glory, but your entire estate still boots a POSIX descendant compiled by a C toolchain older than your OKR framework
Anonymous

Steve's legacy: touchscreens. Dennis's: every touchscreen OS. Media priorities: impeccable
@Araalith 2y

Oh, come on. Progress has never depended on just one man. There is always another "Steve" or "Dennis".
@dovbenn 2y

F
@InnerTempest 2y

F
Deleted Account 2y

🫡
@ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 2y

Tbh that statistic is bs you can't know what else would get invented if he weren't...
@SamsonovAnton 2y

"We would all read in Binary" seems quite an exaggeration.
@beton_kruglosu_totchno 2y

"No Generic-text languges" O rly?
@Assarbad 2y

Going by "innovative" Apple has been since his death, I think there was something more to him than this meme lets on. But then, I have found that the most prominent and loud "voices" aren't necessarily the most qualified. I think we can agree that in overall society perhaps Ritchie is undervalued. But among those who know, he's not. But perhaps he also wasn't as vain as Jobs?
@TimurWasHere 2y

Cuz Steve Jobs made a lot of money and he's popular by different mom's basement business analytics. Apple fan boys too ofc
@CcxCZ 2y

Lol "no programs" C was derivative of BCPL which was derivative of ALGOL AWK was largely inspired by SNOBOL. Creators of UNIX certainly did a lot of work but don't pretend that happened in vacuum. Learn your computer history if you want to do a meme about it.
@CcxCZ 2y

FFS Zamenhof had a formal programming language way before his computer got built. He just was unlucky to be born on the wrong side of WW2 and didn't really get funds to build stuff, unlike Turing.
@CcxCZ 2y

https://rigaux.org/language-study/diagram.html I kind of wish Modula or Ada have made it instead of C.
1. @anatoli26 2y
  
  Rust! Rust should have been from the beginning! 😆
  
  @CcxCZ 2y
  
  I understand your sarcasm, but look into Ada. It's actually designed for safety critical code, with modern editions allowing seamlessly integrating proofs of correctness. Sadly most of the code has been historically stuck behind NDAs in aerospace and similar industries.
  
  @anatoli26 2y
  
  Actually that was not sarcasm, but sadly Rust & its ecosystem that we love wasn’t possible in those days
  
  @CcxCZ 2y
  
  I'm quite meh on that personally. If there was a stable and relatively simple core language that was self-hosting without relying on the LLVM monstrosity I'd be way more interested.
@RiedleroD 2y

yes, but also no
@gizlu 2y

what is "generic-text language"?
1. @alexandr_guluta 2y
  
  not binary
2. @CcxCZ 2y
  
  I assumed language for processing plain text, such as ed, sed and awk.
3. @ZgGPuo8dZef58K6hxxGVj3Z2 2y
  
  Visual Basic. (Maybe Python prob not)
@kandiesky 2y

The normies only care about marketing and not actually doing something They are full on NPCs and very retarded at that

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The Unsung Engineer vs. The Tech Celebrity

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