Computers Quote by Eric S. Raymond
“Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1978 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machines of different types.”
About This Quote
Source Article: The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 1999
Early C enabled OS development, showing software could be portable across hardware.
In simple terms: C made OS portable across machines.
Key Takeaway
Leverage high‑level languages for cross‑platform software.
Themes
software engineering
portability
innovation
Mood
technical
analytical
Type
historical
educational
When to use this quote
- building cross‑platform apps
- legacy system migration
- educational curricula
- hardware abstraction
Key Concepts
C language
operating systems
compiler technology
Questions to Reflect On
- How does language choice affect system longevity?
- What trade‑offs exist between portability and performance?
A Different Perspective
Assumes sufficient compiler maturity; low‑level performance may suffer.
