Dennis Richie - RIP

I am happy to refer you to a fine tribute to Dennis Richie from Steve Borthwick. And I would like to pay a tribute also to the man who created C and helped Unix.

I remember when I went on my Data Processing Conversion Course after my first few years as an accountant. And I like to think that those two skills, Finance and IT, forged from the need to develop a new Invoice Passing system, are what have made me the well-rounded individual I am today. And in those days, Dear Readers, there was a myth. And that myth was that programming was easy enough even for Systems Analysts. The COBOL language was sold on the belief that it could be written to look like English - instructions such as "GO TO PUB DEPENDING ON YOUR-STATE-OF-MIND". Databases such as DataEase  and later Access encouraged even end-users and Marketing people to believe that they could write computer applications.

But time of course has shown that if you allow someone in Supply Chain to write an Access database - for load planning, or perhaps for order forecasting - then that simple, easy-to-understand table rapidly becomes a mess of badly-normalised tables, views upon views and inadequately optimized SQL queries. Eventually, the Access guru will go down under the strain of all those sub-optimal joins and unwise Excel hooks, and set off for a new career as a baker or a Feng Shui surfing instructor. At which point his formerly grateful colleagues will discover the amount of manual effort with which he kept his edifice going. They will then pay a consultant a grand or so a day to recover the database and try to restore it to something approaching maintainability.

No, Dear Readers, it is clear. End users lack the discipline and logical reasoning ability to construct proper computer systems. Which is why the inventions of C, Java and Unix were so important. They make the point quite clearly that normal people can't be trusted with these things. Computers, even today, are hard and to be respected - to be programmed in hushed tones by experts with white coats. Let the world play with its Tweetdeck and Word for Windows and think it is computer-literate. That is like driving a car and thinking you are a Ferrari motor mechanic. We know that, underneath, it is all very hard and very confusing. And we like it that way.