# RIP Dennis Ritchie: Father of C and UNIX



## Wrigleyvillain (Oct 14, 2011)

...or as this CNN article is titled "The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On".



> That first version of the language wasn't all that different from C as we know it today -- though it was a tad simpler. It offered full data structures and "types" for defining variables, and this is what Richie and Thompson used to build their new UNIX kernel. "They built C to write a program," says Pike, who would join Bell Labs 10 years later. "And the program they wanted to write was the UNIX kernel."



CNN


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## Kreij (Oct 15, 2011)

Yeah, Ritchie's death was overshadowed by Jobs, who was more in the public eye than Ritchie ever was, but what he did for programming and everything we use today cannot be overstated.

I still have a copy of "The C Programming Language" by him and Kerningham.

Ahh the memories of programming in Pascal, Fortran and C. Then OOP hit and we all scratched our heads for awhile wondering how it worked and what to do with it. lol

RIP Dennis.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Oct 15, 2011)

Kreij said:


> I still have a copy of "The C Programming Language" by him and Kerningham.



Cool.


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## Frick (Oct 15, 2011)

Aye.


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## techtard (Oct 15, 2011)

RIP. They say deaths come in threes around here. Knock on wood, hopefully another titan in the field of computing doesn't lose the battle with Hades.


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## Kreij (Oct 15, 2011)

We all die.
If leaving a lasting impression is important to you, then do something in your life that may or may not be remembered.
If you just want to give back as much as you have been given, just do so and know that if the world does not remember you, you still made a difference to someone and they will always be thankful for what you did for them.


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## MRCL (Oct 15, 2011)

Kreij said:


> Yeah, Ritchie's death was overshadowed by Jobs



That is so true since I have no idea who he was until now. But his legacy will remain.


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## twilyth (Oct 15, 2011)

Kreij said:


> We all die.
> If leaving a lasting impression is important to you, then do something in your life that may or may not be remembered.
> If you just want to give back as much as you have been given, just do so and know that if the world does not remember you, you still made a difference to someone and they will always be thankful for what you did for them.


Damn it.  I knew TPU had ways of reading my thoughts.  And wouldn't you know, now I'm all out of tin foil.

Seriously though.  You nailed there K.  Bravo!!!


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## happita (Oct 15, 2011)

Kreij said:


> We all die.
> If leaving a lasting impression is important to you, then do something in your life that may or may not be remembered.
> If you just want to give back as much as you have been given, just do so and know that if the world does not remember you, you still made a difference to someone and they will always be thankful for what you did for them.



True words from a wise man.


RIP Dennis Ritchie.


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## The_Ish (Oct 15, 2011)

Kreij said:


> We all die.
> If leaving a lasting impression is important to you, then do something in your life that may or may not be remembered.
> If you just want to give back as much as you have been given, just do so and know that if the world does not remember you, you still made a difference to someone and they will always be thankful for what you did for them.



Something that positive can't help but become a cliche.


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## Kreij (Oct 16, 2011)

Kind of sad that the Steve Jobs threads got a ton of replies and this one only a few given how much more Ritchie did for the computing world with his coding.
Oh well, the people who understand pause for a moment and reflect on this great man's life and hope that there will be more like him in the future.


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## twilyth (Oct 16, 2011)

Yeah, I feel the same way about Einstein and Neils Bohr or Paul Dirac.  Without them, most of what we consider "modern" tech wouldn't be possible, and yet 999 people out of a thousand have never even heard their names.  Albert helps us explain Mercury's orbit and correct our GPS time signals.  Go figure.


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## IlluminAce (Oct 16, 2011)

Indeed - the influence dmr had on the world is just incalculable. 

Yet, as he never stood in front of a podium releasing a piece of proprietary plastic with a 100s of millions of dollars marketing campaign, Ritchie isn't a household name. In the halls of CS schools worldwide, though, I'm sure it was a different story. In K&R, he lives on...


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## Mindweaver (Oct 16, 2011)

RIP Dennis Ritchie!

I miss my RS/6000....


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## xbonez (Oct 17, 2011)

RIp DR.

It really saddens me how much attention Jobs' death got, while how little Dennis Ritchie's did. Sure, Jobs was a successful man. The numbers of his iUnits sold speak that loud enough for no one to forget, but at the end of the day, he was a corporate businessman. He designed, and managed a company and filled his pockets (rather successfully). He DID NOT revolutionize any market. Did the iPhone change the smartphone market? No. Touch screens were the next obvious increment to that market, and would have been made whether the iPhone existed or not. Macbooks and iMacs? Let's not even go there.

By all means, mourn the loss of Steve Jobs. Just, let's not make him out to be something he wasn't He was successful, he wasn't Great. 'Great' is a word reserved for those who changed the world for the better in ways that will persist for decades to come. Dennis Ritchie was great.


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