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

Posted by msmash on from the you-are-missed dept.

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."

17 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. honorary slashdot second story posting... by avandesande · · Score: 4, Funny

    Coming tomorrow!

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
    1. Re:honorary slashdot second story posting... by Pseudonym · · Score: 2

      He'd still be more interesting to listen to than Shkreli.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  2. He was never really honored the first time around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. C always did suck a garbage collection by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    We thought we cleaned that out years ago.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:C always did suck a garbage collection by cfalcon · · Score: 5, Funny

      *** glibc detected *** /dritchie/: double free or corruption

  4. Re:He was never really honored the first time arou by shaitand · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Especially since Steve Jobs in relative terms contributed almost nothing to the world while Ritchie is an undisputed father of modern computing.

  5. Re:He was never really honored the first time arou by Pezbian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like any other time in life, average people care more about who's in front of the camera than who's behind.

    Not that we can blame them. Out of sight, out of mind.

    --
    In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
  6. He didn't die. by halivar · · Score: 5, Funny

    We only deleted his pointer. So he's got a tombstone, but he's still alive. Little chance of finding him, though.

    1. Re:He didn't die. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      This'll get him.

      void *p;
      p=(void *)0;
      while (1) {
          free(p++);
      }

      No, wait! I forgot about everyone else! ^C^C^C

  7. Ritchie++ by OffTheLip · · Score: 3, Funny

    what an operator...

  8. Re:He was never really honored the first time arou by ewhac · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
  9. Who? by jbmartin6 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
  10. Re:He was never really honored the first time arou by jmccue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wish I had mod points, he should have received 10x the number of accolades than Jobs. But I guess marketing always wins

  11. So wait... is this a dupe? by mark-t · · Score: 2

    Previous story

    Is there a statute of limitations on duplicate stories?

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  12. Re:He was never really honored the first time arou by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Rounded corners come and go, but pointers are forever....

    I was angry that Jobs was receiving all the death press when DMR died. Dennis was a great, soft-spoken, man. Met him a few times. Had a beer with him at a Usenix hospitality suite many many years ago.

    If any one tiny group of people are, from a "root cause" point of view, responsible for the amazing technology we are experiencing today, it would have to be
        Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, and Brian Kernighan. There is a *tremendous* amount of infrastructure code written in C, and Unix is still everywhere,
        in its guise as Linux, *BSD, and MacOS.

    I propose that we have an annual day dedicated to DMR. He quietly did more to change the world in positive ways than any politician, living or dead, in recent memory...

  13. Re:He was never really honored the first time arou by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As long as you believe all that matters is engineering, people will fail to utilize the technology that engineering can bring.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  14. Re:He was never really honored the first time arou by shaitand · · Score: 2

    On the contrary engineers would use it utilize it anyway and the morons ultimately would fall behind and be culled for the benefit of the human race.