Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away

WankerWeasel writes "The sad news of the death of another tech great has come. Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and a key developer of the Unix operating system, has passed away. For those of us running Mac OS X, iOS, Android and many other non-Windows OS, we have him to thank. Many of those running Windows do too, as many of the applications you're using were written in C."

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[Anonymous Coward]

goodbye world

Re:And no patents

[TheRaven64]

Had he been a patent hound, he'd have died a rich man.

I doubt it. Most of what he created was part of the 'worse is better' philosophy. Given the choice between C and Algol, most people would have picked Algol in the '80s, but C compilers were cheaper (or free), so they went with C. The same with UNIX. There were much better operating systems around, but they were either expensive, required expensive hardware or, in many cases, both. C and UNIX were both good enough and free. That usually beats really good and expensive. If they'd tried to make a large profit from either, they'd have failed. In fact, the BSD lawsuit (AT&T vs UCB) came close to killing UNIX.

Re:Not just the apps

[drsmithy]

Most of it is written in C++. A lot of it is written in the C-like subset of C++, but it is not C.

Not according to Windows Internals, Fifth Edition.

Re:And no patents

[JAlexoi]

Sorry, but ALGOL is just as awful as Pascal for an engineer. It's a freaking language developed by academics for developers. C on the other hand was the language by developers for developers. Obviously academics chose what's best for them, thus Pascal still survives...

My memory of Dennis Ritchie

[bsDaemon]

I started learning C on FreeBSD 2.2.8 when I was in the 8th grade. In 9th grade, the internet was still a much wilder place than it is today, and felt a lot friendlier and smaller. As such, I didn't really see anything wrong with emailing random "public figures" to ask them questions. Of course, some didn't respond, some were rude assholes (Linus, I'm looking at you...), but some were truly amazing. In the amazing category would be Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, both of whom would answer my emails promptly and regularly. I corresponded with both of them for the better part of a year and a half, before doing things like getting a girl friend. Both Ken and Dennis were more than happy to hep me out with questions, give me advice and steer me in the right direction.

I wish I still had those emails but, alas, I don't. Of all the digital "property" I wish I had never lost, those emails are pretty much the only thing on the list. I don't know where I would be in life, or what I would be doing, if it weren't for the work they did and their guidance when I was younger. Dennis might be the first "famous" person that I've ever felt like the world was poorer in some way for losing.

Re:dmr

[loxfinger]

My computer science professors, back in the mid 1980's, were highly suspicious of any computer book thicker than "The C Programming Language." I understand now how they respected Dennis' gift for concision.

Re:Goodbye

[luis_a_espinal]

No, Windows is written in Visual Basic.

I hope this is a joke. Can't tell among the cloudy clouds of the cloudy interweebz.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:dmr

[Zancarius]

I was thinking about that book myself - I don't know that I've ever read a better programming book. Not only could the guy invent a language but he could write well enough to explain it in as easy a manner as possible given the subject matter. That's a talented guy right there.

If you (or others) haven't read his essays on the history of C [bell-labs.com] and UNIX [bell-labs.com], you should. He was a fantastic writer, and he managed to make such "dry" subjects palatable for even non-programmers. Indeed, reading memoirs of his time at Bell Labs during the 1970s takes you there, with him, while he and his colleges developed the core technologies that would create the world we're in today.

There are several other essays written by him, but those two are the ones I've had bookmarked for a very long time and stand out in my mind.