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Dennis Ritchie died yesterday

firestarter

firestarter

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2002
5,506
227
Green and pleasant land
Dennis Ritchie died yesterday

And if you don't know who he is, then you should.

Creator of the C programming language, co-creator of the Unix operating system.

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/busines...s-ritchie-father-of-unix-and-c-dies-40094176/

dennis-ritchie-wikipedia.jpg
 
bradl

bradl

macrumors 603
Jun 16, 2008
5,952
17,447
Code: 
#include ˂stdio.h˃
int main(void)
{
printf("goodbye world\n");
return 0;
}

BL.
 
Last edited:
M

Moribund

macrumors newbie
Jul 16, 2011
9
0
All he provided was tools. Good tools, perhaps, but just tools. Of course we don't care. If he was't around, someone else would've provided the tools. A poor craftsman blames his tools for his poor performance. Why should he praise them for his good performance?
 
KnightWRX

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Original poster
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
No arguing. Talk about Unix, C and how they have impacted your life if you wish, but don't argue over the death of a man who did so much for the entire industry. He's the giant others have stood upon to create the products and services we use today.
 
Scepticalscribe

Scepticalscribe

macrumors Haswell
Jul 29, 2008
65,181
47,565
In a coffee shop.
KnightWRX said:
No arguing. Talk about Unix, C and how they have impacted your life if you wish, but don't argue over the death of a man who did so much for the entire industry. He's the giant others have stood upon to create the products and services we use today.
Click to expand...

I agree completely with this post, and breadth of vision and sheer innovation should be saluted (especially in a forum dedicated to tech matters) with the respect such invention deserves.

Moribund, those remarks were uncalled for.
 
KnightWRX

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Original poster
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
Scepticalscribe said:
I agree completely with this post, and breadth of vision and sheer innovation should be saluted (especially in a forum dedicated to tech matters) with the respect such invention deserves.

Moribund, those remarks were uncalled for.
Click to expand...

I'm celebrating the life of the man by installing a fresh new HP-UX box today for a production server.:D
 
GorillaPaws

GorillaPaws

macrumors 6502a
Oct 26, 2003
932
8
Richmond, VA
Did he write the compiler that would convert C into the assembly code of it's day or just design the syntax of the C language (or both)? I wonder what he thought of the syntax for Objective-C blocks.

Very sad news.
 
MacHamster68

MacHamster68

macrumors 68040
Sep 17, 2009
3,251
5
Thats the point we all to often forget the ones who dont go all the time into the public and make us aware about what they did for us .
UNIX and C are quiet a milestone in computing as we know it today and Dennis Ritchie should get the recognition he deserves .His achivements are no less important then the achievments of Steve Jobs, and i bet Steve Jobs would agree there if he would still be alive .

without Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson there would today be no Linux, Android, Mac OS, iOS, JavaScript, C++, maybe we would have something else but thats speculative , maybe we would still use Multics

Like we would not use Mac's today if Steve Jobs had not meet Steve Wozniak. Maybe we would not use OSX like it is today if Steve Jobs had not seen the Gui from Xerox Parc

One cant just go from today back in history and say if Person X had not the idea someone else would have come up with it
 
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gnasher729

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,566
Very sad news indeed.

I realized that computers are now so old that those pioneers who did things that are still relevant today, like Dennis Ritchie, will be leaving us now one by one because of old age.

Code: 
#include <stdio.h>
int main (void)
{
    printf ("Goodbye, world.\n");
    return 0;
}
 
M

Moribund

macrumors newbie
Jul 16, 2011
9
0
OK. I guess you guys are right. And of course I'm not happy anyone's dead. I suppose it's crass to say I don't care. That's ungrateful; He's indirectly affected my life.
 
henchman

henchman

macrumors 6502a
Dec 28, 2004
548
6
Moribund said:
OK. I guess you guys are right. And of course I'm not happy anyone's dead. I suppose it's crass to say I don't care. That's ungrateful; He's indirectly affected my life.
Click to expand...

Actually, he very directly affected everyone's life if they are using any computer devce at all.
 
K

KingCrimson

macrumors 65816
Mar 12, 2011
1,066
0
Moribund said:
All he provided was tools. Good tools, perhaps, but just tools. Of course we don't care. If he was't around, someone else would've provided the tools. A poor craftsman blames his tools for his poor performance. Why should he praise them for his good performance?
Click to expand...

Remember we all stand on the shoulders of giants, Jobs included. Be more humble.
 
firestarter

firestarter

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2002
5,506
227
Green and pleasant land
Dennis had a pretty good sense of humour. When 'The Unix Hater's Handbook' was published, Dennis provided an 'anti-foreword' for it. Here's the last paragraph:

Here is my metaphor: your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains enough undigested nuggets of nutrition for some. But it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy. Bon appetit!
Click to expand...

:D

UNIX-HATERS_Handbook_cover_ISBN_1-56884-203-1.png
 
I

interrobang

macrumors 6502
May 25, 2011
369
0
Moribund said:
OK. I guess you guys are right. And of course I'm not happy anyone's dead. I suppose it's crass to say I don't care. That's ungrateful; He's indirectly affected my life.
Click to expand...

He directly affected your life; he just did it at such a technical level that you don't understand how.
 
bradl

bradl

macrumors 603
Jun 16, 2008
5,952
17,447
Moribund said:
OK. I guess you guys are right. And of course I'm not happy anyone's dead. I suppose it's crass to say I don't care. That's ungrateful; He's indirectly affected my life.
Click to expand...

Actually, he directly affected your life.

But then judging from your other post, you obviously don't realize that you are posting from a web browser that was compiled from source code in a language that he created.

That bank account of yours (we know you have one).. stored in a database, compiled from source code in a language that he created.

That Mac of yours.. running MacOS, which was built on top of NextSTEP, a derivative of an operating system.. yep! you guess it! That he created!

Just about everything computer related, underneath it all, had his hand in, because he, Kernighan, Thompson, and everyone else at Bell Labs laid down the framework for what we have now.

In short, respect and recognize. ;)

BL.
 
Heilage

Heilage

macrumors 68030
May 1, 2009
2,592
0
I have to admit I hadn't heard his name before, but learning what he created makes me realize that he probably laid the groundwork for what I will build my future career on.

Rest in peace.
 
kdarling

kdarling

macrumors P6
Jun 9, 2007
17,373
5,925
First university coding class = 47 years ago
Ritchie and his fellow scientist Kernighan are so famous among educated programmers, that you only need their initials to refer to them:

"K&R" by itself refers to "The C Programming Language" book. As in, "Give back my copy of K&R, please!"

"K&R Indent" refers to the book's code style.

"K&R C" refers to Ritchie's original C language dialect.

--

Almost every system in our daily lives, from traffic lights to car computers to browsers to multitasking, relies on what they invented.
 
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