17 replies to this topic

[nfries88]

Found out a couple hours ago that Dennis Ritchie died. He co-created the C programming language and the Unix operating system. Modern computing is built upon his great accomplishments. The sad thing is, his death was kept in the shadows as we all mourned Steve Jobs; who could not have done the great things that he did without Ritchie's contributions to computer science.
<br><br>Update: He died on the night of the 8th.<br>

[Krohm]

That's bad! It is sad he didn't had an acknowledgment. Even WP didn't mention.
I surely appreciated his work very much - although I am not claiming I understand it.

[frob]

Yes, it is sad. My condolences to the family and those affected.


While I feel for them, I don't think dmr's death is a tragic loss, especially on a scale with Jobs.


dmr was 70 years old and died of an unspecified illness complicated by age. He was a private man generally, never seeming to like the spotlight. He had retired several years ago from Lucent and was out of the public spotlight. In short, he was becoming an old man. He was in the phase of life where death can be greeted like a friend.


Sad, yes, but everyone must die. As you grow older you learn that death is not to be feared, and by itself is another phase of life. I keep telling my family and friends that when I die I want to have a big party with rainbow balloons and little fluffy cupcakes with sugar sprinkles on them, and maybe a bright 'bon voyage' sign. Based on what was publicly revealed about Dennis Ritchie, he would probably have wanted something similar.

(Since you mentioned him, compared with Steve Jobs was 56, still actively making contributions to the world, actively in the public spotlight and did not die from incidents relating to old age, but to an aggressive cancer. Much more tragic to be taken in the prime rather than the sunset.)


/edit: Shorten for clarity.

[nfries88]

I wasn't arguing that we should have overlooked Jobs' death. Just that Ritchie was, historically, much more significant; and it is a shame that even in my circle of computer scientists his death was ignored for half a week.

[blueshogun96]

RIP Mr. Ritchie.

Learning C helped bring me out of depression in high school.

[Alpha_ProgDes]

RIP, (Grand-?)Father of modern programming. WIthout you, we might all be programming in LISP right now. Or worse, ALGOL.

[way2lazy2care]

RIP, (Grand-?)Father of modern programming. WIthout you, we might all be programming in LISP right now. Or worse, ALGOL.

or we'd all be mechanical engineers.

/le gasp

[DarklyDreaming]

Yes, it is sad. My condolences to the family and those affected.


While I feel for them, I don't think dmr's death is a tragic loss, especially on a scale with Jobs.


dmr was 70 years old and died of an unspecified illness complicated by age. He was a private man generally, never seeming to like the spotlight. He had retired several years ago from Lucent and was out of the public spotlight. In short, he was becoming an old man. He was in the phase of life where death can be greeted like a friend.


Sad, yes, but everyone must die. As you grow older you learn that death is not to be feared, and by itself is another phase of life. I keep telling my family and friends that when I die I want to have a big party with rainbow balloons and little fluffy cupcakes with sugar sprinkles on them, and maybe a bright 'bon voyage' sign. Based on what was publicly revealed about Dennis Ritchie, he would probably have wanted something similar.


Steve Jobs was age 56, still actively making contributions to the world. He was actively in the public spotlight and sought it out, using his reality distortion field to charm and entertain those around him. He was vivacious. He did not die from incidents relating to old age, but to an aggressive cancer. He did not want to retire, and was still in the life phases where death should be fought.


In that respect, Job's death is more tragic, and so justifiably getting more attention. Also, his actions had a more direct affect on many more people. While dmr's contribution to the computing world directly impacted a few million people, Job's direct impact was several hundred times that. (Both, of course, had a global indirect impact.)


So yes it is news to share, but considering that he was a private individual and advancing in years, I won't be mourning overmuch.

^This.

Still, I feel at least the programmers who know what impact he has had on the world should tip their hats, make a nod or whatever they fancy -- just in a small sign of respect. Then we can talk about that party -- 24h C coding sprint ftw! x3

[mdwh]

A sad day.

Steve Jobs was age 56, still actively making contributions to the world. He was actively in the public spotlight and sought it out, using his reality distortion field to charm and entertain those around him.

Indeed - certainly a marketing genius to get so many trapped in the RDF, crediting Apple with so many mythical "firsts", I would say

In that respect, Job's death is more tragic, and so justifiably getting more attention. Also, his actions had a more direct affect on many more people. While dmr's contribution to the computing world directly impacted a few million people, Job's direct impact was several hundred times that. (Both, of course, had a global indirect impact.)

Depends what we mean by direct or indirect.

Presumably you are claiming C and Unix are only "indirect" because people don't directly use them - but the point is, most of the modern technology that people use today (including Apple's!) relies on these things. Maybe there's a level of indirection there, but it's still a use that I would say is pretty direct.

But there's nothing analogous with Jobs or Apple here - instead, the "indirect" effect was that people claimed even if you don't use Apple products, somehow they were "influenced". Aside from the claims often being dubious in themselves, this is not at all the same thing. My Nokia 5800 has C libraries on it - it doesn't have anything like "Iphone libraries" on it, no matter how many Apple fans try to miscredit Apple for the products I use.

Speaking directly - of course, millions use Macs or IOS products. But all of these are surely users of Unix too, so even directly, I would rate him higher.

I take the point about an earlier death seeming more tragic though.

Personally I don't care who people mourn or don't mourn. But I did care when people told me that *I* should care, even as a non-Apple user, because somehow he was responsible for all the non-Apple products I use. And my point was that the same could be claimed in turn of other people influencing their loved Apple products - and I knew damn well that these people wouldn't mourn deaths of such people, or even be aware of them. Sad it only took a week to prove me right.

It also shows up the myth that we should celebrate Jobs as being a tech guy, a geek, who wanted to make products and didn't care about business or money (some spoke as if he personally made the Iphone all by himself, rather than being the CEO of a multinational company). No - this shows us that the little guys behind the technology are lucky to get a footnote; Jobs was remembered with much greater fanfare because of his marketing, because of him being a public figure in business.

So yes it is news to share, but considering that he was a private individual and advancing in years, I won't be mourning overmuch.

Indeed - no one should mourn anyone they didn't know personally. But anyone daring to express that a week ago for Jobs was hit with accusations of being disrespectful...

[alnite]

I am guilty of not knowing this. What can I say, I rely on popular media to feed me news. When popular media doesn't even know what a "C" or a "UNIX" is, it won't say much about it.

RIP Dennis Ritchie. A true pioneer in modern computing.

[boolean]

but to an aggressive cancer alternative medicine)

Fixed

(interesting discussion on the matter)

[Ravyne]

I think we can all be forgiven for a delayed reaction -- the news didn't even appear on slashdot until this morning (last night?)

Honestly, if we're going to bring up Jobs also, I wouldn't be suprised if he had passed away days or even a week before the date they announced he had passed. Not that there's any kind of conspiracy being accused, I just happen to think that the timing is a little too suspect, jobs having "passed" just hours after the biggest Apple product reveal of the year.

Anyways, Richie was one half of the team that began an effort which brought a practical programming language to the fore and inspired countless syntactic successors -- and one which didn't throw performance out the window as previous high-level languages had done. He also co-created Unix, spawning imitators and eventually feeding into the vibrant Linux ecosystem we have today. There are few men who could claim to have made as sweeping and tangible contributions to the practice and exercise of our craft. Many others have made great additions to the theory of Computer Science, but few of those left us with something that we feel every day in our work. Both of his big contributions are among the most enabling developments ever in computer science.

[mytre]

What is going on? First Steve Jobs now Dennis Ritchie?
I guess Mayans were right, the end is coming.

Rest in peace Dennis Ritchie, you were a giant..

[rip-off]

I am guilty of not knowing this. What can I say, I rely on popular media to feed me news. When popular media doesn't even know what a "C" or a "UNIX" is, it won't say much about it.

RIP Dennis Ritchie. A true pioneer in modern computing.

I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on the BBC RSS feed about his passing.

[Dwarf King]

R.I.P Dennis Ritchie you moved us all a great step further in the process of learning.

[shurcool]

Thank you for your contributions, Dennis Ritchie.

[Anri]

Very sad news indeed. C was the first language I learnt(well, maybe Basic on the ZX Spectrum) and have always had a fondness for it. It made learning other languages much simpler.

I for one will not forget his great contribution to computing.

[BeerNutts]

I still have my K&R (Brian W. Kerninghan and Dennis M Ritchie) "The C Programming Language" (Second Edition) I bought in 1994 by my desk here at work, and often have to reference it.

Thanks for the work, sorry to hear you're gone.