Was dennis ritchie more important than steve jobs(digitaltrends.com)

1 pointsby zandivor 13 Jahren2 comments

Was dennis ritchie more important than steve jobs

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/was-dennis-ritchie-more-important-than-steve-jobs/

2 comments

zandivor 13 Jahren

Dennis Ritchie eventually became the head of Lucent Technologies’ Software System Research Department before retiring in 2007; he never led a multi billion-dollar corporation, sought the public eye, or had his every utterance scrutinized and re-scrutinized. Ritchie was by all accounts a quiet, modest man with a strong work ethic and dry sense of humor. But the legacy of his work played a key role in spawning the technological revolution of the last forty years — including technology on which Apple went on to build its fortune.

Conversely, Steve Jobs was never an engineer. Instead, his legacy lies in democratizing technology, bringing it out of the realm of engineers and programmers and into people’s classrooms, living rooms, pockets, and lives. Jobs literally created technology for the rest of us.

Who wins? We all do. And now, it’s too late to personally thank either of them

etvmuellervor 13 Jahren

Who was more valuable, the tool maker or the tool user? The tool user created value, but the tool maker made it possible. And do we need to consider the parents of each, for their part? These are probably well discussed in philosophy. My answer is that the civilization that produced the tool maker and the tool user is more important, because of interdependencies, comparisons of great contributors is problematic.