Dennies Ritchie died, 5 days ago...

[innonimatu]

and apparently no one cared in the news! He co-invented (with Ken Thompson) the C programming language and UNIX, starting it as a side project during his work at Bell Labs.

C and its derivatives are the languages used for the vast majority of the software - and virtually all the important software, the infrastructure - in existence today. UNIX would evolve into and inspire Linux, MacOS and and all of its derivatives, having now spread even to "smartphones".

The Internet and computing in general would surely be very different from what we know were it not for his contributions, almost certainly much poorer and more fragmented. He never got rich out of it, he never tried to control what he created, and he created it in the first place with the aim of making other people's lives easier, of sharing those creations. It's sad to see such an important man pass away without the public even so much as noticing it, just after a glorified marketeer who has also recently passed away had been so eulogized for his supposed "innovations" in computing. So, I want to remind people of him here, and also remind people that there were, and are, important technical innovators like Ritchie who are not driven by profit and prestige. That before this age of patent spats, copyrights and "intellectual property", which we are told are "absolutely essential to drive innovation", great people were already creating and improving things just for the sake of creation and improvement.

Dennis Ritchie, rip.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Wow. I can't believe there hasn't been any publicity about this. Dennis Ritchie was a huge influence in computer science.

Wired Magazine: Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On

Dennis Ritchie (standing) and Ken Thompson at a PDP-11 in 1972. (Photo: Courtesy of Bell Labs)

The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won’t match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.

And then some.

“When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. But Dennis had a bigger effect, and the public doesn’t even know who he is,” says Rob Pike, the programming legend and current Googler who spent 20 years working across the hall from Ritchie at the famed Bells Labs.

“Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX,” Pike tells Wired. “The browsers are written in C. The UNIX kernel — that pretty much the entire Internet runs on — is written in C. Web servers are written in C, and if they’re not, they’re written in Java or C++, which are C derivatives, or Python or Ruby, which are implemented in C. And all of the network hardware running these programs I can almost guarantee were written in C.

“It’s really hard to overstate how much of the modern information economy is built on the work Dennis did.”

One of the most influential nerds in the history of computers has died, and nobody even noticed.

 

[GoodGame]

His wikipedia entry is pretty nice though. I got to admit that his name didn't register in my mind, until you guys mentioned C and what was built from it.

 

[aelf]

He didn't make the iPod or the iPhone and have his face plastered all over the media, so most people don't know who he is. OH GOD PLEASE BRING BACK STEVE JOBS AND WE'LL GIVE YOU JUSTIN BIEBER, OBAMA, ANYONE!!!!!

 

[Mise]

I had no idea who he was until he died. The mark of a true hero...

 

[Leoreth]

Not to speak ill of the dead, but Jobs was just merely walking in this man's footsteps. RIP.

 

[aronnax]

The world is truly unfair.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

and apparently no one cared in the news!

I know, I just found out

R.I.P.

 

[warpus]

Goodbye World

 

[El_Machinae]

It's an injustice that someone who created so much information was killed by something like prostate cancer and heart disease

 

[Luckymoose]

Goodbye World

/thread

R.I.P

 

[Tahuti]

R.I.P. Ritchie

 

[Verarde]

Wow! I had no clue! I have high respect for this man and his life now.

 

[Kozmos]

The inventor of all my programming joys and woes. RIP bro.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I heard about this yesterday on gamedev.net.

He has returned void from main(). RIP.

 

[GoodGame]

I was reading some more on it, and I think some of the lag in the news was he lived alone and was basically retired. Still RIP.

 

[Disgustipated]

At a first glance it looked like Denise Richards which would be very sad indeed. I kid, I kid. this guys life is just as important as Denise Richards.

 

[jtb1127]

I noticed a few days ago.

RIP

 

[MjM]

When Azash told me a few days ago is when I learned of it. RIP.