Inventor of C Dennis Ritchie Honored With Second Death (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Dennis Ritchie invented the "C" programming language, so a second round of honors comes as no surprise. Although five years ago he passed away, some confusion over a tweet started the social media avalanche known as "second death syndrome". The problem, especially if you look at it from Ritchie's perspective, is that he's been dead for five years -- exactly five years. That time gap seems to have escaped some of the biggest names in tech, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who late Wednesday tweeted out Wired's five-year-old obituary on Ritchie, thanking him for his "immense contributions." Om Malik, a partner at True Ventures and the founder of tech site GigaOm, retweeted Pichai's tribute before soon recognizing his mistake and tweeting an apology for "adding to the confusion and noise." Craig Newmark, founder of the popular online bulletin board Craigslist, also paid his respects, saying, "this guy made a huge contribution to the world."

Comments

He was never really honored the first time around

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that his death was overshadowed in the public by the passing of Steve Jobs just a week earlier, I think he deserves a second death.

Re:He was never really honored the first time arou

[ewhac]

This is what makes Sundar Pichai's tweet especially puzzling. When Steve Jobs passed away, Google gave over its home page to a memorial, with a link to a page on Apple's Web site. There wasn't even a discussion on whether this was appropriate; it was simply done, because of course it should be done.

A week later, DMR passes, who was arguably a greater contributor than Jobs, yet no memorial appeared on Google's home page. One of the excuses given was that potential destinations for a memorial link wouldn't be able to handle the traffic. Even after being called on it during a company meeting, Google management remained unswayed.

I thought their handling of the affair was rather ad-hoc and sloppy -- not in line with the company's image at all.

Who?

[jbmartin6]

"some of the biggest names in tech" turned out to be three. And big is a bit subjective. I never heard of "Om Malik, a partner at True Ventures and the founder of tech site GigaOm" before, and I only know the third guy since he is the Craig in Craig's list.