[Blake]

while everyone cries about steve jobs, one of the few people that essentially enabled people like steve jobs and bill gates to make billions of dollars was a man named dennis ritchie. dennis co-created a programming language called 'C' and also co-wrote a operating system called unix. for those of you that aren't familiar with either, the computer you're typing on today, and many of your smartphones, pretty much emanated from those two things. those macs and iphones you use all run a unix-based kernel. hell, terminal on a macos computer is straight unix shell. oh and that windows OS, completely compiled from C code. dennis ritchie was the half-father of virtually all software.

so i guess what i'm getting at is that there was a man behind steve jobs and bill gates that made their profiteering possible, but gets none of the credit. i'm giving that credit here. while right now we focus on steve jobs' accomplishments, he was also a really crafty businessman that made billions through great ideas and a really good legal team. he did change a lot about how people view computers and computing, but he didn't invent it. the guy that pretty much did invent modern computing has died, and it wasn't steve. so RIP dennis ritchie. thanks for making this all possible.




and, no, i ain't mad, some of you just fools.

[GregTheStig]

Holy crap!! I knew who he was as one of my professors briefly covered him and his accomplishments but I had no idea he had passed. Thanks for sharing I guess

[escobar929]

man, didnt know he passed. Thanks to him, I have a job, although programming in C++ and C#

RIP

[Simsims]

Jobs is way overrated.

Ritchie is the real man behind everything.

[E90SoFlo]

I think you can give respect to someone without trying to "bash" someone else. RIP both of them.

[ibarry92]

RIP Dennis Ritchie.

[ragingclue]

Originally Posted by E90SoFlo

I think you can give respect to someone without trying to "bash" someone else. RIP both of them.

I see what you did there.

RIP to the man in the shadows getting shit done.

[Simsims]

Originally Posted by E90SoFlo

I think you can give respect to someone without trying to "bash" someone else. RIP both of them.

Sure, put the real man under the shadow and give the glory to the others?

Without Dennis, there WOULD BE NO Apple.

Apple OS is itself, single user UNIX.

Dennis didn't even make the f***ing headlines. Talk about fairness? WTF has this world come to?

[Kroy]

RIP Ritchie

[BigDog]

real shame, he lived a few houses away from me in NJ.... my dad used to work with him back in the old bell labs days

[WWONG]

Some caveman invented the wheel, but Goodyear still rolls around like it's so boss. What's your point? RIP to the guy, but all he had was an idea. You have to realize although he co-invented C and Unix, they would've existed anyway in another form. It's only a matter of time.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by WWONG

Some caveman invented the wheel, but Goodyear still rolls around like it's so boss. What's your point? RIP to the guy, but all he had was an idea. You have to realize although he co-invented C and Unix, they would've existed anyway in another form. It's only a matter of time.

but the difference is we can't identify the caveman that invented the wheel, but we can identify the person that fathered modern software from it's inception, to today, and probably indefinitely. while there are millions of steve jobs mourners, this guy gets virtually no recognition. dennis ritchie provided jobs to scores of people, including steve jobs and bill gates, that create software for we end users to use. people like steve jobs and bill gates were just the conduits that brought dennis ritchie's creation into our lives while they reaped all the massive profits, yet most people don't even know who dennis is.

[Pcemkr]

Ritchie's influence is really felt more broadly that Jobs', but Jobs' made it realized/tangible for the average person. C/Unix are the building blocks of what Jobs' popularized.

[ragingclue]

Originally Posted by Pcemkr

Ritchie's influence is really felt more broadly that Jobs', but Jobs' made it realized/tangible for the average person.

Absolutely agree from a technical standpoint and effect on the industry.

What Ritchie did was crucial to the progress of the technology itself, not just the packaging of the tech. Not only that, but not enough people really know about Bell Labs and exactly how much they shaped the world we're in today. That place was like an assembly line of the building blocks of technology today. So many brilliant guys there....

[MidwestGolfBum]

Originally Posted by ragingclue

Not only that, but not enough people really know about Bell Labs and exactly how much they shaped the world we're in today. That place was like an assembly line of the building blocks of technology today. So many brilliant guys there....

So true. It's amazing when you hear about many of the tech start ups of the past 15-20 years how many had some direct impact from Bell Labs.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by ragingclue

Absolutely agree from a technical standpoint and effect on the industry.

What Ritchie did was crucial to the progress of the technology itself, not just the packaging of the tech. Not only that, but not enough people really know about Bell Labs and exactly how much they shaped the world we're in today. That place was like an assembly line of the building blocks of technology today. So many brilliant guys there....

this, this, and this! the things that came out of bell labs, and the people that created them, are pretty much solely responsible for fathering all computing and many other things which we use everyday. C/C++, unix, digital cellular, the transistor, wireless networking, and fiber optic communication just to name a few.

[Blake]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/14/tech/i...bit-bell-labs/

The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won't match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.

And then some.

"When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. But Dennis had a bigger effect, and the public doesn't even know who he is," says Rob Pike, the programming legend and current Googler who spent 20 years working across the hall from Ritchie at the famed Bell Labs.

"Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX," Pike tells Wired. "The browsers are written in C. The UNIX kernel — that pretty much the entire Internet runs on -- is written in C. Web servers are written in C, and if they're not, they're written in Java or C++, which are C derivatives, or Python or Ruby, which are implemented in C. And all of the network hardware running these programs I can almost guarantee were written in C.

"It's really hard to overstate how much of the modern information economy is built on the work Dennis did."

at least the story is finally gaining some traction with the media

[Simsims]

Originally Posted by Blake

this, this, and this! the things that came out of bell labs, and the people that created them, are pretty much solely responsible for fathering all computing and many other things which we use everyday. C/C++, unix, digital cellular, the transistor, wireless networking, and fiber optic communication just to name a few.

telephone, dsl, cable, etc etc etc etc

This man >>>> Jobs.

[radix]

os x is not "single user unix", it's just unix. android, iphone os, both trace their lineage to dmr's work. that's just on the unix side, when you throw C into the equation , you can include pretty much everything.

[infinitekidM2C]

RIC

[Blake]

Originally Posted by radix

os x is not "single user unix", it's just unix. android, iphone os, both trace their lineage to dmr's work. that's just on the unix side, when you throw C into the equation , you can include pretty much everything.

i was waiting for you to enter the fray

Originally Posted by infinitekid2002

RIC