Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011)
October 13th, 2011 by Benj Edwards
In Memoriam: Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011)
Developer of the C programming language, co-creator of UNIX
Few individuals have been as influential in the field of computers as Dennis Ritchie. Programmers have used his language, C, to author much of the world’s best software. UNIX, an operating system Ritchie first co-developed in 1969, led the way for all modern interactive operating systems, including MS-DOS, Linux, and Mac OS X. UNIX still forms the conceptual and technological basis of most server operating systems in use today. Ritchie will be richly missed.
October 13th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
I stole this comment from elsewhere because I can think of none better:
main()
{
printf(“goodbye, world\n”);
}
What a giant. May he rest in peace.
October 13th, 2011 at 7:27 pm
October is now officially my least favorite month.
October 13th, 2011 at 10:06 pm
I feel the same way, idisjunction…
Maybe they just needed a master programmer up there…
October 14th, 2011 at 1:35 am
Mr. Ritchie, thank you for working to produce one of the most influential programming languages of all time. You may now exit(0);
October 14th, 2011 at 3:57 am
It says something unpleasant about our society that even though Ritchie truly changed computing for the better on pretty much all platforms/interfaces, we won’t see tributes to his greatness all over the media because he wasn’t brilliant at marketing or entertainment, “merely” technology.
(I’d make a clever comment using C, but 16 years after taking the class in college, I can’t remember enough of the commands to do so.)
October 17th, 2011 at 9:04 am
Grand Master, we will miss you. Today’s world will never be the same without C and Unix.
dmr_fan, i like that comment!