News

Dennis Ritchie (1941 - 2011)

October 13, 2011

Industry News Item

Wikipedia has this to say about Dennis Ritchie:

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie(username:dmr, September 9, 1941 -October 12, 2011[1]) was an American computer scientist notable for developingCand for having influence on other programming languages, as well as operating systems such as Multics and Unix. He received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology 1998 on April 21, 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007.

Ritchie was best known as the creator of the C programming language and a key developer of the Unix operating system, and as co-author of the definitive book on C,The C Programming Language, commonly referred to asK&R(in reference to the authorsKernighanand Ritchie).

Ritchie's invention of C and his role in the development of Unix alongside Ken Thompsonhas placed him as an important pioneer of modern computing. The C language is still widely used today in application and operating system development, and its influence is seen in most modern programming languages.Unixhas also been influential, establishing concepts and principles that are now well-established precepts of computing.

Ritchie was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988 for "development of the 'C' programming language and for co-development of the UNIX operating system."[3]

A Student's Perspective

As a student studying computer science from the mid 80's until now. As creator of the C programming language, and developer of the first Unix operating systems Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson were father's to our learning and understanding of what you had to learn, to become a "geek". Back when it was almost not even cool to watch movies about Geeks. As a computer student, we would carry "The C Programming Language" book and reherse its writings to every last detail. Long before the internet, long before website, downloading and sharing were far behind floppy disks. And the only social network was hanging out in the school cafeteria. These guys were developing the framework of what is now UNIX, Linux, Mac OS X and every embeded system and device including our iDevices.