I think we can all be forgiven for a delayed reaction -- the news didn't even appear on slashdot until this morning (last night?)<div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.&nbsp;

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[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=2]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.[/font]

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.

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.

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

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.

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.