nrc
10-13-11, 01:23 PM
Dennis Ritchie passed away last weekend at the age of 70. Unless you're a nerd you may have never heard of Dennis Ritchie, but his impact on modern computing was huge. As the the creator of the C programming language and co-creator of the Unix operating system he turned computing into something collaborative and interactive. He also co-wrote The C Programming Language, one of the seminal works in computer language instruction.
His genius was the elegance and simplicity with which he solved complex problems. Much of the way things are in the world of computers and networking today can be traced back to those solutions. Much of my career and many of the toys that I play with were built on the foundation that he laid, for that I am grateful to him.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/kd14.jpg
From Bell Labs in 1972: Dennis Ritchie standing, Kenneth Thompson seated
His genius was the elegance and simplicity with which he solved complex problems. Much of the way things are in the world of computers and networking today can be traced back to those solutions. Much of my career and many of the toys that I play with were built on the foundation that he laid, for that I am grateful to him.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/kd14.jpg
From Bell Labs in 1972: Dennis Ritchie standing, Kenneth Thompson seated