Unix creator Dennis Ritchie dies aged 70

[StanleyB]

Less well reported, but of historical interest to those of us who have had to fight our way through UNIX in the 80's and 90's.

Pioneering computer scientist Dennis Ritchie has died after a long illness.

Dr Ritchie was one of the creators of the hugely influential Unix operating system and the equally pioneering C programming language.

A vast number of modern technologies depend on the work he and fellow programmers did on Unix and C in the early days of the computer revolution.

Those paying respects said he was a "titan" of the industry whose influence was largely unknown.

Along with Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna, Dr Ritchie was one of the key creators of the Unix operating system at Bell Labs during the 1960s and 70s.

Unix's influence has been felt in many ways. It established many software engineering principles that persist until today; it was the OS of choice for the internet; it kicked off the open source movement and has been translated to run on many different types of hardware.

It was also at Bell that Dr Ritchie created C, one of the most widely used programming languages in the world. It is familiar to almost every modern-day developer.

In 1999, Dr Ritchie's influence and accomplishments won official notice when he was awarded the US National Medal of Technology - the highest honour America can bestow on a technologist.

Mr Pike said that with his passing, the world had lost a "truly great mind."

Paying tribute on his blog, Google programmer Tim Bray said it was impossible to overstate the debt his profession owed to Dennis Ritchie.

"I've been living in a world he helped invent for over thirty years," he wrote.

On Twitter, developer James Grimmelman said: "Ritchie's influence rivals Jobs's; it's just less visible."

[lurcher]

Yep, I saw this, very sad, one of the greats for certain. Its hard to not make the comparison with Jobs in the reporting or lack of it. It is certainly the case that without Ritchie there would be no OSX or Android. And the internet would be very different to what it is today.

[sq225917]

Let's be honest there's barely a computer in existence that doesn't run programs or an OS that were either written with, compiled by or running on code that he developed. No unix, no C, no C++, no Linux, no OSX, nada zip.

But does he get the plaudits that the greedy thieving salesman got, DHF.

[jostber]

Remembering Dennis Ritchie:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterpri...itchie-cre.php

R.I.P to one of the most important innovators in the computer world ever.