Dennis Ritchie: Unix & C father dies :(

MrVertigo · #1 13.10.2011, 16:22

Dennis Ritchie passes away. What a month for the IT world.....

Remembering hours spent in the lab as student on Unix and C

MrVertigo · #2 13.10.2011, 20:38

#include <stdio.h> int main(void) { printf("Goodbye World\n"); return 0; }

Pegaso · #3 13.10.2011, 23:32

Yep, he leaves us an amazing legacy. C is still what, the 2nd most used language?
And the Unix Philosophy, like Small is beautiful, Portability over efficiency, etc., these things should be carved in every developers' desktop wallpaper!

MrVertigo · #4 14.10.2011, 09:22

I'm not sure he received the recognition he deserves.

phdoofus · #5 14.10.2011, 09:34

	Quote:	Pegaso
	Yep, he leaves us an amazing legacy. C is still what, the 2nd most used language? And the Unix Philosophy, like Small is beautiful, Portability over efficiency, etc., these things should be carved in every developers' desktop wallpaper!

In the high performance computing world (most of the stuff that you read about that gets run on supercomputers), it's almost all Fortran.

summerrain · #6 14.10.2011, 11:56

	Quote:	MrVertigo
	I'm not sure he received the recognition he deserves.

Yup. The Steve Jobs thread was flooded and the co-founder of UNIX's thread is quiet.

This man might not have made the world of technology a little more beautiful but he has helped shaped the evolution of computers. Highly underrated.

RIP.

Helm · #7 14.10.2011, 12:07

	Quote:	summerrain
	the co-founder of UNIX's thread is quiet.

*brings a New Orleans type of fanfare into this thread*

Never worked with C. But I had to buy an extra shelf to put all the C and derivates books at home. Always sad to see a great mind pass away.

RetiredInNH · #8 14.10.2011, 20:29

Excellent obituary in NY Times: Dennis Ritchie, Trailblazer in Digital Era, Dies at 70:

	Quote:
	Dennis M. Ritchie, who helped shape the modern digital era by creating software tools that power things as diverse as search engines like Google and smartphones, was found dead on Wednesday at his home in Berkeley Heights, N.J

Kosti · #9 14.10.2011, 20:42

	Quote:	summerrain
	Yup. The Steve Jobs thread was flooded and the co-founder of UNIX's thread is quiet. RIP.

Could not agree more. Ritchie`s impact was so much more deeper and fundamental in shaping modern computing, and hence less noticed today.

RetiredInNH · #10 14.10.2011, 21:27

	Quote:	summerrain
	Yup. The Steve Jobs thread was flooded and the co-founder of UNIX's thread is quiet.

All of Apple's toys run under Wikipedia reference-link

iOS which "... is derived from Mac OS X, with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and is therefore a Unix-like operating system by nature".

Macchiato · #11 14.10.2011, 21:35

	Quote:	Pegaso
	... C is still what, the 2nd most used language? ...

After chinese language?

Macchiato · #12 14.10.2011, 21:37

	Quote:	summerrain
	Yup. The Steve Jobs thread was flooded and the co-founder of UNIX's thread is quiet. This man might not have made the world of technology a little more beautiful but he has helped shaped the evolution of computers. Highly underrated. RIP.

Fully agree.
he was more behind the curtain unlike businesmen.

edot · #13 14.10.2011, 21:45

Oh that's sad. Such a tradition of good work from the Labs.

I didn't know the UNIX and C folk from the Labs, but I got to work with several of the statisticians in the late 1980's. So many really wonderful researchers -an excellent group of people.

Wollishofener · #14 14.10.2011, 22:28

	Quote:	edot
	Oh that's sad. Such a tradition of good work from the Labs. I didn't know the UNIX and C folk from the Labs, but I got to work with several of the statisticians in the late 1980's. So many really wonderful researchers -an excellent group of people.

We here in our company for 20 years worked with Xenix, which apparently is related somehow to Unix

borntough · #15 19.10.2011, 00:35

	Quote:	summerrain
	Yup. The Steve Jobs thread was flooded and the co-founder of UNIX's thread is quiet. This man might not have made the world of technology a little more beautiful but he has helped shaped the evolution of computers. Highly underrated. RIP.

You bet. Even in news sites, this was not a the top news which is quite appalling.
I got to know about this only today and frankly and quite sad.
I dont think the masses realize the impact C or Unix has on the Internet

RetiredInNH · #16 26.10.2011, 05:04

	Quote:	MrVertigo
	Dennis Ritchie passes away. What a month for the IT world.....

The month is not yet over, and John McCarthy, 84, Dies:

	Quote:
	While teaching mathematics at Dartmouth in 1956, Dr. McCarthy was the principal organizer of the first Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The idea of simulating human intelligence had been discussed for decades, but the term “artificial intelligence” — originally used to help raise funds to support the conference — stuck. In 1958, Dr. McCarthy moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where, with Marvin Minsky, he founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It was at M.I.T. that he began working on what he called List Processing Language, or Lisp, a computer language that became the standard tool for artificial intelligence research and design.

Pegaso · #17 26.10.2011, 08:32

I hope somebody behind the curtains is picking up the token for these brilliant people. The usual technology-pricks shown in the media are definitely not the ones I want shaping tomorrow's computing...

nickatbasel · #18 26.10.2011, 10:30

They are related but only by marriage. They tend to ignore each other at parties.

Cheers,
Nick

	Quote:	Wollishofener
	We here in our company for 20 years worked with Xenix, which apparently is related somehow to Unix

amogles · #19 26.10.2011, 10:54

	Quote:	Pegaso
	Yep, he leaves us an amazing legacy. C is still what, the 2nd most used language?

and the first most used language is essentially a cheap copy of C.

amogles · #20 26.10.2011, 10:55

	Quote:	summerrain
	Yup. The Steve Jobs thread was flooded and the co-founder of UNIX's thread is quiet. This man might not have made the world of technology a little more beautiful but he has helped shaped the evolution of computers. Highly underrated. RIP.

A beautiful languages does bring beauty to the world of computers.

It's maybe not something that Joe Public sees or appreciates, but it is beautiful neverthelss.