Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, John McCarthy, and Daniel McCracken

We lost four significant people from the computing world this year.

Steve Jobs needed no introduction. Everyone new him as that slightly crazy guy from Apple, the one who would show off new products while always wearing a black mock-turtleneck shirt.

Dennis Ritchie was well-known by the geeks. Articles comparing him to Steve Jobs were wrong: Ritchie co-created Unix and C somewhat before Steve Jobs founded Apple. Many languages (C++, Java, C#) are descendants of C. Linux, Android, Apple iOS, and Apple OSX are descendants of Unix.

John McCarthy was know by the true geeks. He built a lot of AI, and created a language called LISP. Modern languages (Python, Ruby, Scala, and even C# and C++) are beginning to incorporate ideas from the LISP language.

Daniel McCracken is the unsung hero of the group. He is unknown even among true geeks. His work predates the others (except McCarthy), and had a greater influence on the industry than possibly all of them. McCracken wrote books on FORTRAN and COBOL, books that were understandable and comprehensive. He made it possible for the very early programmers to learn their craft -- not just the syntax but the craft of programming.

The next time you write a "for" loop with the control variable named "i", or see a "for" loop with the control variable named "i", you can thank Daniel McCracken. It was his work that set that convention and taught the first set of programmers.

Farewell Steve Jobs

Jobs was the last of the original titans of microcomputers. There were many folks in the early days, but only a few known by name. Steve Wozniak, Gary Kildall, and Bill Gates were the others.

Those titans (the known-by-name and the unsung) made the microcomputer revolution possible. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Digital Research, Radio Shack, Commodore, Heathkit, and even TI and Sinclair all made personal computing possible in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

There are few titans today. Yes, we have Steve Ballmer at Microsoft and Larry Ellison at Oracle, but they are business folks, not technologists. The open source community has its set (Linus Torvalds, Eric S Raymond, and others) but the world is different. The later titans are smaller, building on the shoulders of their earlier kin.

Steve Jobs and Apple taught us some valuable lessons:

Design counts: The design of a product is important. People will pay for well-designed products (and avoid other products).

Quality counts: People will pay for quality. Apple products have been priced higher than corresponding PC products, and people buy them.

Try things and learn from mistakes: Apple tried many things. There were several incarnations of the iPod before it become popular.

One can enter an established market: Apple entered the market with its iPod well after MP3 players were established and "the norm". It also entered the market with its iPhone.

One can create new markets: The iPad was a new thing, something previously unseen. Apple made the market for it.

Drop technology when it doesn't help: Apple products have mutated over the years, losing features that most folks would say are required for backwards compatibility. AppleTalk, the PS/2-style keyboard and mouse ports, RS-232 serial ports, Centronics parallel printer ports, even Firewire have all been eliminated from the Apple line.

Use marketing to your advantage: Apple uses marketing strategically, coordinating it with products. It also uses it as a weapon, raising Apple above the level of the average technology companies.

Replace your own products: Apple constantly introduces new products to replace existing Apple products. They don't wait for someone else to challenge them; they constantly raise the bar.

Focus on the customer: Apple has focussed on the customer and their experience with the product. Their customer experience beats any product, commercial or open source.

Apple must now live without Steve Jobs. And not only Apple, but all of us. Steve Jobs' influence was not merely within Apple but extended to the entire computing world.