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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.
Most of Windows is written in C.
I am NOT glad he's dead, I am also NOT glad he's gone.
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.
...but this is just sad. This guy did stuff I care about.
Godspeed.
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.
Ritchie arguably contributed hugely to the computing industry, and his achievements should certainly be celebrated and he should be remembered.
But ... comments like yours seriously piss me off - do you really think that if Ritchie hadn't created C, that no one else would have? That today we would still be using pre-C languages, constructs and ideas? That the world would have stagnated? That there would be no modern equivalents of Windows, OSX, Unix etc etc?
Someone would have done it, sooner or later. Someone would have come up with the idea of a higher level, easier to use and more agile language, and the world would have moved on.
I'm not trying to detract from Ritchies achievements, because he was the one that came up with that idea, and moved the world on - however, don't think that he was the only chance for that advancement...
If Einstein had not developed Relativity, someone else would have, so I guess we can just sort of ignore or make light his contributions to physics on /. to make ourselves look kewl.
Bullshit. Much more than Steve Jobs Ritchie was one of the key figures in the development of modern computing. C and Unix are among the major touchpoints in computer history, both to soon become dominant players in application development and operating systems.
This is like saying "Someone else would have laid the groundwork of modern computing, so while Alan Turing was a real smart and influential guy..."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So because the development of C-like constructs was theoretically inevitable, you don't think one of the men who actually did it deserves to be remembered for that?
Who should get the credit then?
Never mind. Don't answer that. There is no valid answer. You're obviously just a petty, jealous troll, protesting at the man's online memorial like a Westboro Baptist bigot at a military funeral.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Surely exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); is more fitting for a man of Dennis Ritchie's talents?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
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!
Nope, the third option: you're really dumb for reading your own interpretation into things that were never stated, and flying off the handle over it. Maybe time for those bipolar meds?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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
It's worth noting that the guy who wrote the fucking manual didn't answer by telling you to RTFM.