Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Not my work... got from net.
How great minds work (:o)
Atlast I decide to put away my procrastination and start preparing something for my placements. So I took up this book on C and like all books on C it started with the history of C. I was awestruck when I read about how Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie created C...
They were playing a game called 'Asteroids' in a mainframe (a computer used by many people simultaneously), and because of the congestion, the game was slow and they couldn't control their spaceship and got hit by asteroids too frequently. Their friends started making fun of them and though it was not their mistake they took it personally and decided to show them their real talent in the game.
For this they needed a better computer, and since they were working at AT & T labs they had plenty of them to choose from (I am talking about an incident taking place around 1970 here... this is before the time of the PC). They got hold of an unused one but unfortunately that computer did not have an OS! So our frieds Brian and Dennis decided to write an OS for it (man... what sort of gaming freaks!!! writing an OS to play a game).
So they sat and wrote an Os in assembly language on some other computer (lets call it the 'testing' computer to prevent confusions later on) to test it and got it ready. But now to install the OS in there gaming computer they need to translate the program to its assembly language. So they decided that instead of unnecessarily reinventing the wheel, if they use a high level language to write their OS, all they would have to do is install the compiler of the language in the computers that they wish to install the OS. So they sat about designing a new language, and for it a new compiler. Then they installed the compiler in the gaming machine as well as the testing machine, tested their new OS in the testing machine and installed it in the gaming machine, played 'asteroids' and lived happily ever after.
Their language was called C which is now used to write the code for games because of the high processing speed (This leads to a rather perplexing question... what came first? computer games or C... thats an example of an obscure joke :)... read through the post 'what orkut meant' for more details).
Almost all the inventions in history took place as a result of a chain of necessities starting from a very simple need or as a search for a very trivial problems in life. We all are waiting for a big opportunity to do something great, but are ignorant of the small ones that that cross our path everyday
They were playing a game called 'Asteroids' in a mainframe (a computer used by many people simultaneously), and because of the congestion, the game was slow and they couldn't control their spaceship and got hit by asteroids too frequently. Their friends started making fun of them and though it was not their mistake they took it personally and decided to show them their real talent in the game.
For this they needed a better computer, and since they were working at AT & T labs they had plenty of them to choose from (I am talking about an incident taking place around 1970 here... this is before the time of the PC). They got hold of an unused one but unfortunately that computer did not have an OS! So our frieds Brian and Dennis decided to write an OS for it (man... what sort of gaming freaks!!! writing an OS to play a game).
So they sat and wrote an Os in assembly language on some other computer (lets call it the 'testing' computer to prevent confusions later on) to test it and got it ready. But now to install the OS in there gaming computer they need to translate the program to its assembly language. So they decided that instead of unnecessarily reinventing the wheel, if they use a high level language to write their OS, all they would have to do is install the compiler of the language in the computers that they wish to install the OS. So they sat about designing a new language, and for it a new compiler. Then they installed the compiler in the gaming machine as well as the testing machine, tested their new OS in the testing machine and installed it in the gaming machine, played 'asteroids' and lived happily ever after.
Their language was called C which is now used to write the code for games because of the high processing speed (This leads to a rather perplexing question... what came first? computer games or C... thats an example of an obscure joke :)... read through the post 'what orkut meant' for more details).
Almost all the inventions in history took place as a result of a chain of necessities starting from a very simple need or as a search for a very trivial problems in life. We all are waiting for a big opportunity to do something great, but are ignorant of the small ones that that cross our path everyday
My all time fav piece ....
Let me tell you something you already know.
The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows.
It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.
But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward.
How much you can take, and keep moving forward.
That's how winning is done.
Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth.
But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you are because of him, or her, or anybody.
Cowards do that and that ain't you.
You're better than that!
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