[clue] RIP Dennis Ritchie (TALK)

Robert L. Harris robert.l.harris at gmail.com
Thu Oct 13 11:12:51 MDT 2011


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I'm pretty sure the passing of this man (and his team) who was
directly involved in starting us all off deserves a moment of silence
and recognition.

Robert

On 10/13/11 10:24, Mike Bean wrote:
> Hopefully the group can forgive me for posting about a
> non-technical subject, but after all the ruckus regarding Steve
> Job's death, I feel some obligation to point out someone who I'm
> inclined to think, DESERVES to be recognized
>
> *http://tinyurl.com/6yk7y4g
>
> *
>
>
> Father Of C And UNIX, Dennis Ritchie, Passes Away At Age 70
>
> dennis_ritchie6
>
> After a long illness, Dennis Ritchie
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie>, father of Unix and
> an esteemed computer scientist, died last weekend at the age of
> 70.
>
> Ritchie, also known as “dmr”, is best know for creating the C
> programming language as well as being instrumental in the
> development of UNIX along with Ken Thompson. Ritchie spent most of
> his career at Bell Labs, which at the time of his joining in 1967,
> was one of the largest phone providers in the U.S. and had one of
> the most well-known research labs in operation.
>
> Working alongside Thompson (who had written B) at Bell in the late
> sixties, the two men set out to develop a more efficient operating
> system for the up-and-coming minicomputer, resulting in the
> release of Unix (running on a DEC PDP-1) in 1971.
>
> Though Unix was cheap and compatible with just about any machine,
> allowing users to install a variety of software systems, the OS was
> written in machine (or assembly) language, meaning that it had a
> small vocabulary and suffered in relation to memory.
>
> By 1973, Ritchie and Thompson had rewritten Unix in C, developing
> its syntax, functionality, and beyond to give the language the
> ability to program an operating system. The kernel was published in
> the same year.
>
> Today, C remains the second most popular programming language in
> the world (or at least the language in which the second most lines
> of code have been written), and ushered in C++ and Java; while the
> pair’s work on Unix led to, among other things, Linus Torvalds’
> Linux. The work has without a doubt made Ritchie one of the most
> important, if not under-recognized, engineers of the modern era.
>
> His work, specifically in relation to UNIX, led to him becoming a
> joint recipient of the Turing Award with Ken Thompson in 1983, as
> well as a recipient of the National Medal of Technology in 1998
> from then-president Bill Clinton.
>
>
>
>
>
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- -- 

:wq!
====================================================================
Robert L. Harris                     | GPG Key ID: E344DA3B
                                         @ x-hkp://pgp.mit.edu
DISCLAIMER:
      These are MY OPINIONS             With Dreams To Be A King,
       ALONE.  I speak for              First One Should Be A Man
       no-one else.                       - Manowar

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