Lorinda Cherry, author of dc, bc, eqn has died
As one of few authors of an implementation of `dc` and `bc`, but one who never actually met Lorinda Cherry, perhaps I have a slightly different perspective of her work.<p>I've read the closest thing we have to the original sources of `dc` and `bc`: the source bundled with Plan 9. It didn't take me long to read the entirety of the source because they were simple and concise. That immensely impressed me.<p>However, I hate to say that my youth (compared to Ms. Cherry, at least) caused me to look at the source with disdain, mostly from a lack of handling errors caused by user mistakes.<p>It took several days for me to think more carefully about the context. She was writing for herself and other programmers, who would probably be able to recognize when they made a mistake and fix it.<p>The code has a simple elegance that mine will never have. Sure, you might call mine "industrial strength," but I think a quote by ** Gabriel sums up the difference between Ms. Cherry's code and mine:<p>"I'm always delighted by the light touch and stillness of early programming languages. Not much text; a lot gets done. Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Who'd have guessed sophistication bought such noise?" [1]<p>And that says nothing of the design of her software.<p>`dc` was, and in many ways still is, the simplest calculator that could ever exist. It was the simplest shell too, with the `!` command. I personally believe that it was for this reason that `dc` was the first program Bell Labs made run on the PDP-11. [2] `bc`, while more complicated, is also a great design (for the time).<p>In short, Ms. Cherry was a master of her trade, and I only recognized that from afar.<p>One of the items I had in my bucket list was to meet Ms. Cherry; because of her work on `dc` and `bc`, I felt a kinship to her having written my own. It is sad to know that item will never happen. Oh, well.<p>[1]: <a href="https://people.csail.mit.edu/alinush/6.824-spring-2015/l07-go.html" rel="nofollow">https://people.csail.mit.edu/alinush/6.824-spring-2015/l07-g...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://youtu.be/EY6q5dv_B-o?t=1767" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/EY6q5dv_B-o?t=1767</a>