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Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away
WankerWeasel writes "The sad news of the death of another tech great has come. Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and a key developer of the Unix operating system, has passed away. For those of us running Mac OS X, iOS, Android and many other non-Windows OS, we have him to thank. Many of those running Windows do too, as many of the applications you're using were written in C."
Mourn for his passing, but celebrate his life. He didn't just change the world, he make world.
Just a couple of words: Thank You.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
goodbye world
I wish Facebook would get filled with everybody's remarks the same way it filled for Jobs. This
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
Most of Windows is written in C.
I am NOT glad he's dead, I am also NOT glad he's gone.
It's sad that it's taken so long for this to hit the frontpage. His effect on the whole ecosystem of computing is huge and will last for decades. RIP
A lot of us will be thanking him for his fundamental contributions to computing.
I would hope that, were Jobs still alive, he would thank Dennis for OSX.
Dennis Ritchie had an impact on the technology world FAR beyond what Jobs and Apple could ever dream of. Do you have any idea how many billions of lines of C code are running in the world, or how many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Unix-derived systems are running? Linux, OS/X, AIX, Solaris, HP/UX -- they all owe their origins to this man. Rest in peace, sir.
Had he been a patent hound, he'd have died a rich man.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
RIP Mr. Ritchie. You (and Mr. K) will live forever through the simplicity and geniality of the mighty tools you created. Thank you.
main()
{
printf("Goodbye, World");
}
-RIP dmr
...but this is just sad. This guy did stuff I care about.
Godspeed.
I remember years ago (ok, quite a few) a usenet discussion where someone had mentioned that Ritchie was dead, only to have him reply a few posts latter to assure us that he was still around.
It was "the" tech great. By singling out "Mac OS X, iOS, Android and many other non-Windows OS", WankerWeasel shows he does not realize exactly how big an impact Dennis Ritchie had. The "other famous one" that died recently was a nobody compared to dmr.
Well, that's two down in the IT-celebrity world. Who will be next?
I'm sure Discovery channel will do a documentary about him too. After all, he was infinitely more significant than than Jobs.
Is this world full of morons?
One of the fathers of the modern computing operating sistem, co-creator of C and UNIX, and less than 10 comments?
People is sick.
and all atheists die. Same as the Steve.
So does everyone else. It's not a privilege of atheists.
Sadly this wont get half the attention that Steve Jobs dying got.
It's no exaggeration that without Dennis Ritchie's contributions, many of us would have very different careers. I've been fortunate to spend the first 12 years of my IT career working on multiple Unix and Linux systems, and although I'm not much of a coder, I've compiled a fair amount of C and recognise that if it hadn't been invented, neither would C++ or C#, which constitutes a lot of the code in use today.
Without Unix, what would the Internet been built on? Perhaps something like VMS? Would tools like Sendmail or BIND been developed in those environments? The influence of Unix can be seen everywhere in IT.
Actually, without Unix, we wouldn't have had NeXTstep, which became MacOS X, which became iOS. We wouldn't have had Minix or Linux, so no Android. So the mobile landscape would have been different as well.
I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that Dennis Ritchie's legacy is the IT industry we have today. Most of us stand on this giant's shoulders.
RIP Dennis Ritchie.
RIP
#include
int main()
{
printf("Goodbye, world!\n");
return 0;
}
...said Steve Jobs
printf("Hello, afterworld!\n");
Dennis Ritchie didn't die, he just GOSUB without RETURN.
What other "great tech" died recently?
It's a little unnerving to think about how long Unix has been part of my career. Thanks, dmr.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I never met the man, but he was central to my love of computers.
printf("Hello, Heaven");
To me this is for more significant than the passing of Mr. Jobs.
The elegance and minimality of the C language is a testament to the genius of its creators. Dennis Ritchie played a key role in the development of C and of UNIX. To him, I say, "thank you" for his roles in these great achievements. My sympathies to his family and his friends.
Apart from personal loss.
His contributions to computing have been effecting us all for nigh on 40 years and that effect has been overwhelmingly beneficial. It's extremely likely (barring anything bad happening in 2038) that we will all continue to reap the benefit of DMR's existence for many decades to come.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Goodbye world
His contribution goes way beyond the ones of a recently celebrated "genius". I could make a list of what C gave us today, but I'd have to start it at 0.
In virtually everything we do today we owe to Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C.
Thank you Dennis Ritchie.
Thank you for making the world a better place.
Always had a great respect for him for making C and UNIX. I guess it's early in the day, but way less comments than I was expecting for news like this.
Dennis Ritchie
I still have a copy of K & R on my bookshelf. His contributions to the field of computer science were wonderful. IMHO, C should be the entry point for anyone considering pursuing a life in computer programming.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It looks like his time() ran out too soon.
he died, and I think the logical and precise man he was he would be annoyed at the use of such a weedy euphemism
RIP. You had an early and profound influence on my career.
May you be remembered and celebrated for all that you brought to computing. I hope your name will not be forgotten from history. The fact that your death is announced as 'another great one' in the same breath as... someone else makes me scared for your rightful place in it.
I am truly sad that you are gone.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Not just a hero, but an entertainer, a man of genius, who by all accounts I've read, was humble and approachable. I wish him well in the ever after, and my condolences to his loved ones. Sorely missed, and fondly remembered, and inspiration to us all.
The talent of this man has a major part in what has made our world today.
His contribution was essential and it is perceptible throughout the world today.
He deserves all the honors, if not more, than a talented salesman gadget.
Paix à ta mémoire, l'ami. Ce soir j'arroserai dignement ton départ.
It's syntax is awful.
Speaking of which... That should be "Its syntax is awful.". Its = belonging to it. It's = it is.
Without C we would be programming in BASI, OBOL, and PASAL
RIP dmr
:/
Did he shoot himself in the foot?
Have you realized that the first generation of hackers is starting to reach that age?
It's a huge loss for the world. Ritchie was a genius, a great man, and he helped change the world forever in the right direction.
C and Unix changed the entire world. The popularization of computing, moving it away from the universities and into the private space of companies and homes started with C and Unix. It revolutionized Operating System and software design in general completely, indirectly giving birth to just about every technology on your computer right now.
A brilliant man, a fellow Hacker and Atheist has died today. He will be missed.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
He is not gone, he will always live through our C code and will be remembered by those who read the K&R, the absolute best programming book there is and will be.
Dennis Ritchie, thank you for your dedication and hard work.
RIP
Dad died today of an information technology and the IT world, who together with Thomposo, Kernighan, Stallman created the digital world in which we now viviamo.Grazie Dennis Ritchie, inventor of the C language (all operating systems are based on ed that language), you have given so much to all of us in the IT industry and beyond. A big THANK YOU for your genius.
....and there's a big banquet laid out.
There's balloons, champagne, and somewhere in the background John Lennon, Elvis Presley, and other entertainment greats are warming up, ready to perform.
Looks like one hell of a party.
Steve Jobs looks at St.Peter.
"All of this. For me?" says Steve.
Before St.Peter can answer, Steve is off telling everyone how to lay out the plates, criticising the choice of champagne,. shouting at the servants etc.
Then he goes up to John Lennon.
"Hey John", says Steve, "Really sorry to hear about that deal in the park, but for fukcs sake dont play any of that Yellow Submarine shit".
John Lennon looks at Steve Jobs and says, in his finest Liverpool accent.
"A'right la. Anytin fer you Dennis mate".
Steve look at John and says:
"Hang on, dont you know who I am?"
John Lennon says: "Yeah mate, you're Dennis Ritchie arent yer?".
Steve Jobs' head nearly comes off:"What the fukc do you mean Dennis Ritchie? I'm Steve Jobs you fukcing halfwit".
John Lennon looks at him for a minute and turns round to Elvis Presley and says:
"ey Elvis, der jugglers 'ere burra tink 'es fergorris gear".
tadaaaaa
thank you thank you thank you
im here all week
try the veal
godspeed, dennis ritchie.
Unfortunately for the planet, we could only define him once. RIP.
exit(0);
RIP, DMR.
Let's not forget the style of writing of the K&R C programming language book and how chapter 1, with its quick applied introduction, defined the standard for all good technical books going forward.
He is the giant on whom's shoulders steve stood on.
Here is a clip of Ritchie explaining Unix (although I ~knew~ him mostly through his work on C)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7FjX7r5icV8
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Ha ! The value of *my* copy of 'C' can only go up !
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I am a lover of C and Unix. I admire the man for what he gave us.
My favorite quips from the K&R C book are
"the infinitely abusable goto statement" and
"C is not a large language and is not served well by a large book"
I started off as an computer science student, but switched to engineering.
time and again, i asked to take C rather than Fortran.
they said C was just a passing fad.
his language will out live us all.
Bump, bump, bump.
Another person bites the dust.
Happens everyday, many times during the day.
While I learned my C from Ritchie & Kernighan, I am not surprised to see you die.
Thanks dude, hope it was a great ride, see ya next round.
Be seeing you...
This is sad. I remember in high school he was kind enough to answer some questions through email for a research paper I was doing on Bell lab's influence on the personal computer.
I won't comment on what might have happened had C not been created, but I think the alternatives had Unix not taken off would have been worth seeing.
As pointed out, TOPS or VMS may have taken off, and that would have meant an open competition b/w IBM, DEC, HP and others. VMS itself would have still begat NT (which may or may not have needed C), and the latter would have been adapted on RISC platforms as well. Also, people wanting to create FOSS software would have tried re-engineering one of these, instead of Unix.
So was he working on Plan 9 when he passed away?
There were many programming languages available in Ritchie's day. What set C apart was a very well-written book that became the defacto standard in defining the language. The C Programming Language so clearly and succinctly articulated the language that everyone used it and everyone was on the same page as to what to expect from the language. The book also described things at a level low enough that it provided great insight into the low-level details of the system. More than Unix or the C programming language itself, I think this book was Ritchie's greatest contribution to field of Computer Science.
When I was 11 years old sitting in the car home on a road trip with my mother, I found her copy of the K&R 1st edition sitting in the backseat and picked it up. Were it not for this incident my whole life would have been different. I have been a professional software engineer for 12 years now and can thank every second of those years to finding that book.
People always say Jobs was a visionary, but this man was a creator who shared what he made, Jobs monetized a vision other people made for him. Jobs may be loved by the public, but this man is loved by all who appreciate technology, though they may not realize it.
Without the work of dmr and the rest of the 1127 group at Bell Labs, the computing landscape we take for granted would be radically different, and many of us would be in other lines of work.
UNIX isn't the perfect OS, but it does better, in more environments, than anything else out there. Jobs and Torvalds would have very different lives if not for the work Ritchie did.
Requiescat in pace, dmr.
why? :(
Godspeed Dennis.
You know, the majority of all people ever born has not yet died. Therefore the evidence that everyone eventually dies is not very good. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I've been reading Slashdot long enough that I know to expect it, but still I'm saddened by the number of people using the occasion of Richie's death to take another gratuitous slam at Steve Jobs.
Honoring the dead is not a zero-sum game. We can pay tribute to the accomplishments of both Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie without subtracting from our respect for either man.
And if you don't like Steve Jobs, okay, but I think you show more respect for Ritchie by keeping your opinion of Jobs out of this particular discussion. This being Slashdot, there'll be plenty of opportunities for you to do that in the future.
Thanks Dennis for all that you did.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Spent 5 seconds to find one that isn't blocked by proxy servers:
Father of C and UNIX Dennis Ritchie passes away at age 70
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
I started learning C on FreeBSD 2.2.8 when I was in the 8th grade. In 9th grade, the internet was still a much wilder place than it is today, and felt a lot friendlier and smaller. As such, I didn't really see anything wrong with emailing random "public figures" to ask them questions. Of course, some didn't respond, some were rude assholes (Linus, I'm looking at you...), but some were truly amazing. In the amazing category would be Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, both of whom would answer my emails promptly and regularly. I corresponded with both of them for the better part of a year and a half, before doing things like getting a girl friend. Both Ken and Dennis were more than happy to hep me out with questions, give me advice and steer me in the right direction.
I wish I still had those emails but, alas, I don't. Of all the digital "property" I wish I had never lost, those emails are pretty much the only thing on the list. I don't know where I would be in life, or what I would be doing, if it weren't for the work they did and their guidance when I was younger. Dennis might be the first "famous" person that I've ever felt like the world was poorer in some way for losing.
C was my first real programming language over two decades ago, and I use it to this day and I'll probably still use it when Java and C# have long since been forgotten.
Thanks mr. Ritchie.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You pick this time to appease your Windows-hating fetish?
For fuck's sake. A man died. A good man.
A funeral is the wrong time to push your retarded political slant.
Shame on the submitter for being such a child.
Sadly, his name ("WankerWeasel") seems appropriate.
eom
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Though he is dead, his memory will leak on.
RIP. Thank You.
Dennis Ritchie's work is in use all over the world....and beyond. I mean, I'd be absolutely shocked if there wasn't a single line of C code on the Mars rovers, satellites, ISS, or other NASA hardware. At the very least they're using it to control those things. Which means Dennis Ritchie didn't just change the world -- he changed the solar system...
Rest in peace, sir.
To gauge his significance, just imagine if every application written in C were to shut down today, and thus also everything running on Unix... what would be left? I know in healthcare we have a few blasts from the past, applications written in bizarre languages like M(UMPS) and running on something nice and modern like VMS. But then IIRC a lot of VMS is written in C too! Since there's apparently plenty of C in Windows too, is it even possible to avoid it when running anything useful?
C code. C code run. Run code, run! Run damnit RUN!
RIP, DMR.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Except we atheists know that we are going to die, unlike religious fools who believe they'll live forever on top of a cloud.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Greetings, neighbor. Nice sig. ;-)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
You know, the majority of all people ever born has not yet died. Therefore the evidence that everyone eventually dies is not very good. :-)
Rubbish
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
printf("Goodbye World!!");
return 0;
}
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
He's just been deallocated.
Tell us what language you use. So we can compare it to C.
dmr,
Thank you for all that you have done. May you now rest in peace.
That's sad to hear. Farewell KR->R;
I'm sorry for plagiarizing another site, but this one can't be missing here: "His pointer has been cast to void. His process exited with code 0." Like others said, I too value Ritchie's contribution much more than Jobs. Computer wouldn't be what they are today without his work with Kernighan.
Few men can offer a legacy such as his. One cannot go through the day without feeling his influence in some manner. His contribution to modern day life is immeasurably large. Dennis Ritchie stood on the shoulders of giants. But so many stand on Dennis Ritchie's shoulders and will for generations. The world will never know the totality of its loss.
You have done too much to the world and the world has been changed because you.Thank you!
Even all those new flashy things which aren't C are made from it or running inside it if you look closely enough.
Thanks, respect, rest in peace.
It was in 1991 and I had a Warez BBS running with plugins that were called "Doors". And I wanted to write my own ones - in C.
A friend who was quite good in C gave me some easy tasks to code and I started to write code in C. My first programming language. 20 years later I am quite good at it :D I also had a go at other programing Languages like C++, PHP and Java. I mention them because their syntax inherited much from C if not everything.
I don't know... Dennis Ritchie is dead now... and even though I sit on the other side of the world I am happy Slashdot is, finally, covering his passing and I can write this here... because it really bothers me that man is gone... no photo shaking his hand for me :(
and his atoms are returned to the heap.
I never met the man, but it was his code that shaped the rest of my life. In 1978 I entered college to be a physicist. When I discovered I had to actually understand Calculus to get past the basics of physics, I found my way over to the computer lab. There I ran my first program, but as a consumer, not a creator. I was amazed and had to know how the program worked so I went to see the head of the department. The next day I signed up for CS101 for the next semester.
the Head of Comp Sci, just the year before had decided to radically change the direction of the CompSci program from understanding/learning the mainframe world to the emerging mini computers. Out when IBM and in came DEC PDP/11. Out went COBOL, in came C, RATFOR, FORTRAN, and Pascal along with assembler. My first Comp Sci book was K&R and I referenced that book for years. I'll grant he shaped the world, but he did it one programmer at a time. My variation:
Void Main() {
printf("Thank You Richie, from The World");
}
(for those noting that he has not gotten any major press, that is the difference between creation and marketing. Jobs was marketing magician, and very good at his job. Folks like Woz, Richie, Tim Patterson, these creators were the foundations which allowed minds like Jobs or Gates to exist. Their drive was not on attention, but creation. Today's media has little time on depth so they just follow the rule, sex sells and the creator of a programming language is not sexy, the king of marketing shiny devices that do fun things, he's sexy)
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
(Sorry for repeating myself from one of the submissions that wasn't accepted, but...)
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
volatile int dmr=1;
int main()
{
dmr--;
printf(":-(\n");
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" ; # https://pipedot.org/~stderr & http://soylentnews.org/~stderr
Mr. Richie you gave us one tool to bring them all together, one tool to rules them all.
This tool gave us the possibilities to change the world of computer science and bring it to what it is today.
We will miss you : RIP Dennis Ritchie.
BT
Wish I had mod-points...
I've just finished an exchange on Facebook with an old friend who's an avid Mac user. He posted a link to an article responding to RMS's rather tasteless comments on the passing of Steve Jobs, and we got into a long exchange about the merits of open-source versus the "walled garden" world of Apple. One of my main points was that open standards and protocols have been a huge boon to the industry. I'll have to remind him how much of the Apple software he loves was built on the free/open foundation provided by Dennis Ritchie.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
main(0) { printf("Thanks for everything you did Dennis"); } return main()
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Only a great mind like dmr can create a compiler able to compile the following:
for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("|"+(*u/4) %2);
RIP, dmr
Which one did I miss?
Please parse me the tissues :(
Without his work, I probably would have gotten bored with BASIC and stopped learning about computers. My career is mostly thanks to this man.
i think you misunderstand history. the 'worse is better' meme isn't accurate.
the machines ken and dennis worked on were not powerful enough to run much of anything.
there wasn't any hope of running an algol compiler on those machines. they were much too
large. so dennis built what he needed, and not what he didn't. it's called engineering, not
'worse is better'.
--it is unlikely the Internet--sans C and UNIX--could have grown to have the impact it does today;
--Sun Microsystems, HP/UX, IBM's AIX, Linux and the *BSD family never would have been developed, and the data center would look much different;
--Steve Jobs likely never would have been able to take Apple to where it is today (Mac OS X is an amalgamation of Mach and BSD; Objective-C);
--the smartphone environment would be radically different, if even existent ( Apple's iPhone iOS; Android Linux)
I think I'll go curl up with my 25 year old copy of K&R for awhile now.
Thank you for all the good memories, Dennis.
Times like this I really wish there was a better place after death.
C was based on B, not BCPL.
I never thought of Kernighan and Ritchie as a "team of computer scientists", but if you insist on calling two people a "team", so be it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Great man - RIP
Don't worry folks. We'll always have the zombie process to remember him by.
Seriously though. C is still an active language of choice for everything from embedded to server to desktop applications and Unix is the gold standard for operating systems. Most people will never know how much these technologies have and continue to impact their lives.
#include <unistd.h>
int /* I know this is corny, but C and UNIX are my world. */
main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char *argv[];
{
int i;
for (i = 0; i 1318077052;)
write (0, "Thank you Dennis!!\n", 1+9+4+1+2+0+1+1);
return 0;
}
Had he been a patent hound, he'd have died a rich man.
There's more than one type of rich.
Going to your final sleep (?) knowing that you've invented something that billions use, rely upon and benefit from daily, and that has advanced the knowledge and state of humanity... there's a certain wealth in that which selling trendy gadgets can never match.
I'm not saying that I would not sell my organs for money, just that there's a bigger picture.
#include
int main()
{
printf("Goodbye Dennis and thanks for all the code!");
}
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
"The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on." - Newton
It's doubtful whether most dwarves will see further than this giant but alas he is no more.
It becomes more obvious when you look at all the derivatives that have come to be. A Unix timeline is a good way to visualize it and the Levenez Unix timeline shows the highlights of the last 40+ years. It gives a good idea of how much amazing activity there has been.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
correction, quote is Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ritchie, your slim book; and a headful of pointers; to yet more pointers.
Pfffff only Apple fanboi's think they're going to live on top of the cloud.
K&R was, and remains, the shining example of what a programming language reference book should be. C, while a perfectly fine language for it's time, almost surely would have been replaced by some other ALGOL-family language had C never existed. However I can confidently state that my understanding of computer programming would have been far poorer without that small little book. I am sure thousands of others feel the same.
,,.guy who supplies you. Not many will mourn you Dennis but know that to your true family and countless friends, you will always be remembered. We love you very much and thank you even more for what you gave the world. Sleep well my friend.
$action = empty(PHP) ? backToC() : unset(PHP) ; "when the concrete cases are understood, the abstractions are readily
It is indeed a sad day for techies. C , his child will live forever.Very few people have had such a huge impact on the mankind. May his soul rest in peace.
(Not the original poster) The language I use is mainly C, but that doesn't mean that it lacks flaws. The first low-level language that I learned was PL/M, which had a few nice things that C lacks. For example, pointers in PL/M were a slightly higher-level construct, so you could easily represent segmented architectures. On x86, you could use the hardware segmentation support to bounds check your arrays and other data structures automatically - buffer overflows were basically impossible unless you actively tried to write them. If PL/M had been more popular than C, then AMD would have extended the segmentation support with x86-64, instead of killing it completely. We have a couple of decades of buffer overflows to thank C for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's just a buffer overrun. He'll be back.
> For those of us running Mac OS X, iOS, Android and many other non-Windows OS, we have him to thank. Many of those running Windows do too, as many of the applications you're using were written in C.
Oh come on, really? Am I the only one that threw up a little when reading this summary?
I am sitting in front of what he did
This is actually a bigger deal then the royal wedding, the death of monarch's and probably the death of the pope. This better be ran on every news station for the next week non stop. Including a 41 terminal segmentation fault at the funeral.
For me, the remarkable thing is that while Paul Graham wondered aloud about the hundred year language, the one we'd be using a century from now, he completely overlooked C and how long it had already remained not just relevant, but dominant. C was released in 1973, meaning it's nearly at the end of its fourth decade, and it's number 2 (and gaining!) on this month's TIOBE chart (from their summary: "Java lost almost 1% of its popularity in September. If this trend continues, C will be number one again next month."). Put another way, C is 38% of the way to a century of dominance, and there currently few if any signs of its imminent abandonment.
ESR once referred to C's "austere elegance" as something C++ lacks, and I think that neatly pins down what I like about C. I've personally been reintroduced to C over the last few years by the lower-level Mac and iOS frameworks (notably Core Audio), and it's truly nice for doing things like signal processing, where the formality and fussiness of higher-level languages and frameworks would just get in the way.
Also, trashing Steve Jobs doesn't help celebrate Dennis Ritchie's accomplishments, so can we drop that from the thread?
did far more for computing the Jobs did. I bet he won't even get a mention on any big news source :(
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All though this will be noticed by less people than Job's passing it is just as great a loss - I personally think a greater loss as I started my geek life as a C programmer RIP Dennis Ritchie
All but one of my computers run a 'nix-based OS and C is a useful open language I have actually used and might recommend.
If all the media talking heads were to call Dennis Ritchie the father of modern computing and say the world wouldn't have been the same without him, it would be a fairly reasonable statement that no geek would have trouble keeping a straight face at.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
and yet this guy won't. But from what I understand, he was never one to seek attention.
You only need to look at the windows header files to realize that it was also written in C. The marginalization in the OP is not needed, and Windows users owe him just as much.
The BBC news report on Dennis Ritchie's death: here.
Would be good to see this hit the Most Read section of the site.
... most MS-DOS developers picked TurboPascal in the 1980s. C came into wider use later on DOS platforms. I love C, but Algol 60 was also a thing of beauty. (I used Norwegian University Algol back in the late 1970s on our Univac mainframes at the University of Maryland; NU-Algol was a pleasure to work with.)
Men like Ritchie developed the tools that we enjoy to use to do our jobs, men like Steve Jobs brought the customers that pay for the food in our table and the roof over our heads. The praise that both have received is well deserved, and, in the case of Ritchie, it has been far too low for his accomplishments.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Its indeed sad to hear almost after 24 hours
#include std_disclaimer.h
Kernel Panic: Fatal exception
I read his C book a few years ago during my last year in high school and loved it enough that I ended up picking my major in computer science. His work has been truly influential, and I'm sad to see this.
Without him, IT would be a very different place.
I have been programming in C and C-derived languages (mostly C++ but a few others) since high school and will continue to do so as I believe that (for the programs I like to write) C and C++ is the best option.
But the contributions of Dennis Ritchie transcend the boundaries of IT, without Dennis Ritchie the world would be a very different place.
Just looking around my apartment, I have a Windows PC where much of the software running is written in C or something derived from C. I have a Gentoo Linux box where most of the code is C or C++ (and Gentoo itself is derived from Unix)
My Nokia N900 also runs Linux and a large amount of C code (including some C code that I wrote myself and continue to write)
I also have a DSL router running some form of Linux and code written in C.
And I have a bunch of other gadgets that may well contain code written in C including a Canon inkjet multi-function center, a Canon IXUS digital camera, a digital over-the-air TV set top box, a DVD player/recorder and a music keyboard.
Farewell Dennis Ritchie, your contributions to the world of IT will be forever remembered. And one of these days I will finally track down (and read) "The C Programming Language" :)
In spirit of UNIX and C.
vi users can hit % to skip ahead to the closing. emacs users can't.
exit(0);
Best Slashdot Co
#include
main( )
{
printf("goodbye, world\n");
}
Beware, the gay flu abounds.
A truly amazing, inspirational man. Thank you for everything you have done for the world.
... to goodbye.
Talk about living on, through his work...
in no particular order:
Book(s), OSs, programing languages....
-- no sig today
if they could have. At the time, Bell Labs was not allowed to sell software, and software was not patentable until 1981, so there was not a lot of incentive for Bell Labs to tie software-related stuff up legally.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
C is not a large language. It isn't well served by big media.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
What a load of bollocks. Over 100 billion people have been born, of whom fewer than 7 billion are still alive.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
It seems that only recently (today) Bell Labs removed his home page. Or did they take it off-line due to extensive traffic?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unix began the commoditization of minicomputers. With Unix, you could run your application on many vendors' systems, choosing which one you bought this year based on price and performance, not because you were locked in to the vendor you bought last time. This opened up computing to be much more competitive, and was a great benefit to all users. This change affected technical computing very quickly, but took a while longer for business computing.
C is a very clever language, and Unix even more so. Both assume the least-common denominator in hardware, which was a very smart decision. I still remember the awe I had of Unix when I first logged in on a teletype in 1980 to play Adventure and Hunt the Wumpus. Very little else from this era has endured as well as C and Unix.
Thank you, Dennis.
Nor did he "pass on", nor is he "resting in peace". The pattern that made up his consciousness was destroyed and he ceased to exist. Please, stop repeating these tired, superstitious cliches. It cheapens the finality and horror of death. A sentient agent has ceased to exist. Explaining this away with semi-religious terminology just doesn't do it justice.
Unlike the majority of the ~162000 people who will also stop existing today, dmr will not be forgotten, and future generations will continue to use his life's work and benefit from it. I won't say something ridiculous like "he lives on through his work", but I do in fact believe that to be the highest distinction a mortal sentient entity can achieve.
In 1983, Pascal was considered the language used by professionals; C was for geeks. Northeastern University in Boston, the first to have a separate College of Computer Science, taught all its first and second-yea programming courses in Pascal. The only C course offered was a 1-credit "lab" -- likewise for COBOL and VAX Assembly. How times have changed.
Dennis, You'll always be in our memory, even if we did forget to malloc it... or check array boundaries... or any of the other memory-based things C makes us do manually. ;)
http://www.beanleafpress.com
While I never worked directly with Dennis, I met him a number of times during the 80s, between working at other parts of Bell Labs and going to Usenix conferences. He was a really nice guy, unlike a number of other important people in the field.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I read the link. It's a bunch of Apple white knighting. Apple products ARE a "jail made cool" though. RMS might say/do a lot of crazy things, but he's right about that. OSX is a lot better than the old days, but the iPhone still seems pretty bad.
I mean, I have the ability to pull down a custom made ROM on my phone, swap out the kernel with one that gives me almost double the standard battery life, change the look and feel of buttons, wallpaper, and virtually any other aspect of it I desire. Can you change the wallpaper on a iPhone yet? This is exactly why it's 'rooting' on Android and 'jailbreaking' on iOS. I guess maybe it's not a jail to anyone who doesn't care about it, but then again, it's not "lock-in" if you're satisfied with the arrangement, and it's not "real prison" if you're actually happy there.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
I worked in other parts of Bell Labs in the 80s, and also saw him at Usenix conferences. Dennis was bright and did important work, but he was also a really nice guy, and didn't carry a Reality Distortion Field around with him.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Write in C (the song)
Thanks for unix, C, and everything you've done. The world is lesser without you.
main()
{
while (dmr)
{
fork();
}
}
The number of child processes that dmr created is beyond count. It's difficult to come up with any significant code currently running today that doesn't owe its existence to being a child of Dennis. The number of programmers whose entire careers are built on the foundation that dmr gave us is surely in the millions.
Though I never had the honor to meet Mr. Ritchie, my life is brighter for what he gave me. And I'll spend the good part of the day thinking of him.
See, this is why I love the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15287391.
I'm happy to see mainstream media *is* picking this up.
These is even worse than the fanboism for jobs.
This guy is to a fair degree responsible for all the buffer overflow attacks, crashes due to null pointers, and other stuff.
Or do most of the people here write malware?
+1 and then some. It has pretty much BEEN my career for ... holy crap ... 30 years.
I met Dennis formally twice.
The first time he autographed my copy of the C Programmers Guide - from which I actually taught myself C - and I personally thanked him for giving me a career I loved.
The second time I was actually working at Bell Labs as a SA - and I was the person supporting his group. I saw him in his office - but now he was a small white haired man - and introduced myself and told him how much it meant to me to be at the Labs with him. I think my enthusiasm scared him :-).
He was a giant - and the list is almost endless of those that stood on his shoulders.
Goodbye Dennis. It ws an incredible honor.
The components of the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP) are all implemented in C. Even variants of LAMP, like the BSDs or PostGreSQL are in C. Thinking about it, most of our infrastructure, including routers and switches, are dependent on unix-derivatives and C. Ritchie's legacy spreads to nearly every corner of the network and to most, if not all, portable devices.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I always have remembered you, Mr. Ritchie, as well as Thompson and Kernighan. I owe too much to you express it just in a few words. It's been now 20 years since my first encounter with your creation and I will never forget that I have made a living out of it, not only a living but also my joy and my hobby. I am deeply indebted to you and so are may more people, even those who don't yet know and who probably will never know.
#include
int main (char ** argv, int argc) {
printf("Farewall, Mr. Ritchie");
exit(0);
}
Your book was for years the clearest on C and Unix compared to volumes written by the other "experts".
May this mark an important milestone for our profession and show us to advance our knowledge without commitments to profit, commercial success or publicity.
I've, in the previous few days, got annoyed by hearing in the mass medias about a so-called "genius" that created and was the head of Apple. That doesn't bother me much. But what bothers me is knowing that these same media will say nothing about the death of Mr. Ritchie.
It's pretty obvious for all of us Slashdot-ers and geeks, that Mr. Richie is one that will be written with gold letters in history books of computer science. The black K&R book is still the bible of choice for millions of students.
for (;;);
/* We owe him a great deal. I'm glad to have benefited from his work and will honor his memory. */
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
#define NEVER_FORGET "Dennis Ritchie "
void main() //but not forgotten...
{
char* greatness = new char[70];
sprintf(greatness, "1941-2011 ");
printf(NEVER_FORGET);
printf(greatness);
printf("RIP");
return;
}
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
A tribute, let's all sing: http://write-in-c-song.blogspot.com/2009/08/write-in-c-geek-song.html
If you had not created C, I would not ever coded c++, and I would not ever worked as a programmer as I do today. 3.
of all the comments, this is the one that brought tears to my eyes. Not sure why.
The book "The C Programming Language" is what started my career. I saw beauty, elegance and kindness there, and because I loved C, I learned computers.
maybe that's enough. RIP Dennis Ritchie. You did good!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
thank you.
/* Goodbye World program */
#include
main()
{
printf("Goodbye World\n");
}
In other words, nature abhors a vacuum.
Dennis Richie was one of the giants who Steve Jobs stood on the shoulders of.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
As sibling poster pointed out, it’s “its”, not “it’s”.
But never mind that. I would have passed on that were it not for your mention of Wirth. I’d have expected this kind of comment from a Lisp programmer, sure; but Wirth and Pascal... *shudder*
Ignore this signature. By order.
#include
int main()
{
printf("\nGoodbye, world.\nRIP Dennis Ritchie.\n\n");
return 0;
}
As a lifetime opponent of runaway government, unlimited power, ponzi-scheme spending/printing, and centralization/consolidation of political power in any form, I can tell you that not only is there no reward for being in the minority, there is more punishment than you can ever imagine. At some point you will realize that logic is no match for groupthink and popular opinion, and you will simply give up trying to influence other people. But it's not a loss. It's actually a win.
Yes, I'm still in the minority and will always be, but my attitude now is founded on not giving a damn. Try it -- you might even find yourself enjoying it. There is a strange but wonderful feeling of freedom that comes with not giving a damn.
I am glad we can share the memory of this great man without having the mainstream-asshole-media making us.
I am going to light a candle now.
UNIX, OSX, Linux, are all poetry in motion that bring us the beauty and power of the internet, ipods, and even ATM's.
Dennis Ritchie created the language that allowed such poetry to be written end enjoyed.
His book "The C Language" is still the largest selling technical book in history.
I'll bet there's one in your drawer.
Thank you Dennis.
exit 0;
char * is pronounced "string"
I don't mean to be callous at a man's death, but that's the first thing that came to mind.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Not to troll or poke much fun on such a somber occasion, but this has to be mentioned: http://linuxbeard.com/
Not sure if he's included there, but if not, he certainly should be. I saw a photo of Mr. Ritchie on Engadget and that dude is rocking a serious Linux Beard!
This news is a dreadful shock to me, and it goes to show that we often take the true heroes for granted.
I can't say how many times I've read and re-read his various essays, even recently, on the history of C and UNIX and others. That's to say nothing of the famous K&R book.
RIP Dennis.
He who has no
RIP
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
{
return 0;
}
Every open source project in the world should have a Dennis Ritchie memorial hackathon.
main() /*-RIP dmr*/
{
printf("Goodbye, World");
}
"char" rhymes with "star" of course...
Now this matters. Goodbye and well done.
Those of us who know better will mourn. The computer world has lost one of its greatest architects. You laid the foundation for quite possibly EVERYTHING in the modern computer world. I can only hope we will use what you gave us for good things.
OCO is Loco
Thank You Dennis Ritchie for all you gave us.
"Do, or do not. There is no try." -Yoda.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The media prolly dont wanna mention his death, because then they would have to learn about who he was. (lol)
On top of that, spreading the news that alternative/opensource operating systems exist to the mainstream (doosh-bag) public, is not in corporate interests.
Fortunately, his memory is resident on many logic circuits, both human and otherwise... his legacy will live on in our minds and machines.
dmr% uptime
12:00AM up 25596, 6:00, 1 users, load averages: 0.00 0.00 0.00
Although Im an athiest, and I believe DmR was aswell; in the extremely remote possibility that there is an afterlife, Im sure he's showing god a few pointers on how to code a proper universe.
-HasHie
Char is short for character. How do you pronounce the word character?
"Character" is pronounced with a "K" (also Chemistry). So I guess if you mix and match you end up with "car"
Of course, I pronounce it "chair" which is even further from any normal English pronunciation rules.
One of the more unusual eulogies
He was a true genius! I wish I had picked up his book and Unix so much earlier in my life (I did until I was 18). Thank you for all the great contributions to Computer Science! -RIP Dennis Ritchie
My deepest condolenses.
In a way I owe a lot to dmr.
Psh. Back in my day, we used magnetized needles to edit our documents directly on the rotating drum.
Steve Job invented many of my kewl toys. Dennis Ritchie invented the tools Steve used to build my kewl toys.
RIP Dennis Ritchie.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Disrespected by nerds even
You get to ask Dennis Ritchie a question and THAT was the best you could come up with??!!
Wouldn't that be: Dennis Ritchie was one of the giants on whose shoulders stood Steve Jobs?
others insisting it be pronounced like "care" as in short for character
The first syllable of "character" isn't pronounced like "care".
he gave us more than a few pointers
But now C is dead.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Dennis Richie was one of the giants who Steve Jobs stood on the shoulders of.
Steve Jobs stood on everyone he could reach with his feet. Don't put the 2 in the same sentence, it's disrespectful to Ritchie.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This is truly sad. I've said it before and I'll say it again: If it can't be done in C, then it can't (or shouldn't) be done.
Using the Freedom of Speech while I still have it.
Thanks to Ritchie I had the tools to support my family for the past 25 years. Thanks to Ritchie, I enjoyed the work. RIP
People would be using the Zune. While it is true that history can do without any individual, it is irrelevant in this case.
Heck, Ritchie was one hell of a giant - it's easier to name people famous in IT who didn't stand on his shoulders. Come to think of it, if you restrict yourself to the last 30 years or so, it'll probably be an empty set.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm saddened by the news, but even more saddened I am by all the people who try to represent their farewells to Dennis in form of a C program, and get it wrong - in a topic like that, and on Slashdot of all places!
For your reference, here's the canonical "Hello, world" from TCPL 2ed:
Thank you for weeding out all those who can never understand the concept of pointer from computer science courses.
RIP.
Both these parent comments are so, so true.
2011 is proving to be a crap year for IT.
RIP Dennis.
pfft, steve job was like a pimple on the ass of the truly great computer technology giants
Take every media article that tried to make Steve Jobs look like a god and replace his name with Dennis Ritchie, and the article will be true
It's on the CBC News front page right now.
http://puppykhan.livejournal.com/8342.html
I learnt C and unix 22 years ago and it is still earning me a living and still puts a smile on my face - and K&R is just the bible of computer books. It is disgraceful the media has just overlooked this yet gave Jobs a massive send off.
I just started working my way through The C Programming Language (with notebook, pencil, and gcc) about a week ago. This is my first serious foray into programming, and the book hasn't let me down yet. In fact, it's been a lot of fun!
Thanks Mr. Ritchie.
(and Mr. K.)
"One day you will be able to hurt your smart phone's feelings." - Mahhshall
never use a preposition to end a sentence with.
Fuck you and the horse on which in you rode!
cat ~/doc/K+R.pdf > /dev/dsp :)
Now he was a Legend! May he always RIP.
As a faculty member I had access to a little-used PDP11/45 and got one of the first licenses to use UNIX outside BTL. I actually got it running with a phone cradled to my ear talking to Ken Thompson as I twiddled the switches. Access to Ritchie and Thompson was easy at that time and we had many interactions. Some of the students were enamored of UNIX and poured over the source code, lusting to make changes. On one occasion, a BTL researcher came to the university and gave a demo that involved phoning up the BTL UNIX systems. After that, I was pleased that somehow our system seemed to be the most up-to-date one around, with all the latest improvements. The students (who, in 1976, we called "hackers") assured me they were talking to Ritchie and Thompson, but I later got a call informing me that they were logging into the BTL computers (having gleaned the necessary information from the BTL researcher's login) and downloading unreleased code. The lawyers were furious, but Ritchie and Thompson were quite amused and nothing came of it other than a stern warning to the students.
One of the stories I heard about Ritchie and UNIX was that he hated the Honeywell system they used (GECOS) and frequently swore while working in his office. One day a secretary noticed he had not sworn in some time and asked if he had gotten "religion." No, now he had UNIX.
I always say "car" anyways, not sure why, but it sounds good.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Steve Jobs did a lot, and got a lot of media attention. DMR also did a lot (and in some ways, a lot more), but understandably gets less attention. This is because the general public doesn't really grok Unix and C, while they understand Macs and iPhones. But I'm a programmer, have been for a long time. *I* understand DMR's contributions. And so I am sad to hear of his passing.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
You've always been able to change the wallpaper on an iPhone. The rest of the stuff Apple just makes it so you don't need to care in the first place.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
#include void main ( ) { printf("Goodbye World \n"); }
www.muks.in
My small tribute to this legend. Please do share if you use computer and internet in you daily life. Try to know him because he loved his work. Thanks for giving us a more beautiful with you creations.