<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'>I think it's quite appropriate. Without C, Unix might never have left Bell Labs. And without C, what would the software world look like now?<br><br><hr id="zwchr"><b>From: </b>"Mike Bean" <beandaemon@gmail.com><br><b>To: </b>"CLUE's mailing list" <clue@cluedenver.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Thursday, October 13, 2011 10:24:29 AM<br><b>Subject: </b>[clue] RIP Dennis Ritchie (TALK)<br><br>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<br>
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<br><b><a href="http://tinyurl.com/6yk7y4g" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/6yk7y4g</a><br><br></b><h1>Father Of C And UNIX, Dennis Ritchie, Passes Away At Age 70</h1><div>
<img src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dennis_ritchie6.jpg?w=288" alt="dennis_ritchie6" title="dennis_ritchie6" dfsrc="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dennis_ritchie6.jpg?w=288" height="277" width="288"> </div>
<p>After a long illness, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie" target="_blank">Dennis Ritchie</a>, father of Unix and an esteemed computer scientist, died last weekend at the age of 70. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p><br>
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