In His '90 Usenix Presentation, Dennis Ritchie Reminded The Audience That Steve Jobs Stood At The Same Podium A Few Years Back And Announced That X-windows Was Brain-dead And Would Soon Die.

In His '90 Usenix Presentation, Dennis Ritchie Reminded The Audience That Steve Jobs Stood At The Same Podium A Few Years Back And Announced That X-windows Was Brain-dead And Would Soon Die.

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In his '90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie reminded the audience that
Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that
X-windows was brain-dead and would soon die. "He was half-right.
Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of UNIX, from an article in UNIX Today

Related:

I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
-- Rob Pike, on X. Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be gone in two years....
Quote #193 Was it Ritchie or Thompson who said about X
"Sometimes, when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks"?...
If you fill a vacuum, it can still suck. -- Dennis Ritchie
From an operating system research point of view, Unix is -- if not dead -- certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.
Sometimes when you fill a vacuum it still sucks!
Standards committees are not the best ways to create a standard.
Standards meetings and standards themselves are horribly political things....
ken /ken/ n. 1. [Unix] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of Unix.
In the early days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that read "Love, ken"....
ken: /ken/ n. 1. [UNIX] Ken Thompson, principal inventor of UNIX.
In the early days he used to hand-cut distribution tapes, often with a note that read "Love, ken"....
You are not expected to understand this [Unix] cav.
The canonical comment describing something magic or too complicated to bother explaining properly....