RIP Dennis Ritchie

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.[^]
-Or-
A Dead ringer for Kate Winslett[^]

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

Renzo Ciafardone

Indeed. His legacy to the tech world and the WORLD in general are without doubt greater than anything Jobs did tenfold at minimun.

whatIWillDoThisWholeWeek(String NewsMediaName)
{
while(ritchie>jobs*10)
{
if(!mediaKnowsJack(NewsMediaName))
{
stopBeingSinic();
startBeingShock();
praiseMedia(NewsMediaName);
}
else
{
showHowStupidMediaIs(NewsMediaName);
keepBitching();
}

}

This loop will run forever, because Ritchie will always be greater than Jobs by ten fold... RIP Mr. Ritchie

Joseph Mango

That is how I learned C and the world was a nicer place. Thanks Mr. Ritchie. We have all just been us = &Ritchie;

zenstain

This world is not the same without this guy: C | C++ | \ \ Java C# Javascript UNIX | \ \ LINUX Windows Mac OS | | Android iOS I know I'm missing others, but think about the sheer % of all codebase and OS's and the % of all devices (computers, servers, phones, etc) in existence today due to Dennis Ritchie's genius. Staggering. And hardly noticed by the mainstream. Sad.