RIP Dennis Ritchie

PIEBALDconsult

Alas.

Pradeep Shukla 0

May his soul rest in peace...don't have words for his gift that he gave to computing world in form of "C"...I owe all my fundamental understanding of programming to his genius..it's not just me...a lot of other people too would have the same thinking...RIP Dennis...:rose::rose:

Dennis E White

maybe we should call and give our condolences?? http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/

NormDroid

We'll C him in the other side. RIP :rose:

Software Kinetics Wear a hard hat it's under construction
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Rajesh R Subramanian

RIP. :rose:

"Real men drive manual transmission" - Rajesh.

Lost User

Understandably, the mainstream media chose to ignore the news of his death because he was not involved in creating and marketing flashy gadgets like iPads or iPhones. :-(

Nagy Vilmos

Sadly, he didn't have easily impressed fanboyz or produce anything shiny so the mainstream media will not pick this up; BBC are running Blackberry's still down and Jobs's still dead. What is worse is I fear the mainstream technical press won't pick up on it. I can find no mention of it on El Reg.

Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett

smcnulty2000

Amazing how a giant passes into night and we don't hear a thing from the lamestream media. This man truly did change the way we live. RIP, Dennis. Say hi to Jon Postel from all of us when you get there. :rose:

_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.

Septimus Hedgehog

I learned C from the fantastic book he authored. It proved you don't need 1000 pages of drivel to get the point across. So often now, publishers and authors think that to justify a high $ cost for a book, you need to make it ultra-fat. He proved that if the communication content is right, then less is more. I remember that book with affection. C++ and C# can trace their origins back to that pivotal book. As commented, the mainstream media will be too wrapped up in Jobs and RIM to pay him little more than lip-service. :rose:

Lost User

printf("RIP, Dennis"); :rose: or perhaps printf("Goodbye world!"); I suspect there's quite a bit of his work in many products we use daily, even iThings. I use things he created daily and have made a living doing so for most of my professional career.

Keith Barrow

I've e-mailed the BBC about this (pity there isn't a e-version of green ink), I doubt they'll understand. The irony of the blackberry thing is that the software the managers use to e-mail back to the office from the golf course was written in Java AFAICT, so it owes a debt to Dennis Ritchie.

Sort of a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Dilbert.[^]
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Nagy Vilmos

Of course. Try to find a modern OS or language that does not owe him a huge debt. Go on, I dare you! I read something like "Unix is a very simple operating system. So simple it would take a genius to understand. Dennis Ritchie was that genius."

Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett

Henry Minute

One of the disadvantages of old age is that all of your heroes seem to die off. You younger members have a lot more of this to come. RIP Dennis.

Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

Hans Dietrich

He had enormous influence on a still-young industry; most programmers over 40 would know immediately what you meant if you said "K&R". One of my heroes.

Best wishes, Hans

[Hans Dietrich Software]

jim lahey

RIP :rose:

BobJanova

It is a big loss, one of the real founders of modern programming. (Where would we all be without C? And let's not underestimate his impact on the OS world through Unix, either.) K&R is still one of the best ever introductory programming books – as well as being fantastically clever, those two knew how to write as well.

Rutvik Dave

:( ... :rose:

tchizek

Yes I was horribly disturbed on my commute last night when NPR devoted a grand total of 30 seconds to Dennis Ritchie’s passing and followed it with almost 6 minutes of review of a play by an unknown playwright about a subject that has been overdone. Here is someone who basically made modern tech possible and they devote more time to a play – and they got details of his life WRONG too. I was so pissed off, as you can tell I still am a bit.

tchizek

main() { printf("goodby world\n"); }

Fabio Franco

What's the long illness?

"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson