Remembering Dennis Ritchie
Dennis Ritchie is no more. Ritchie, Ken Thompson & team developed a simple operating system that changed the world of computing.That was UNIX, the bedrock of computer operating systems. Their version was later tweaked by Bill Joy & created the free version of UNIX. Ritchie is the creator of C Programming.
Hello World! That is the first sentence you probably learnt in your introduction to computer programing languages, and chances are you learnt it using C, and a computer that was using some version of UNIX as its operating system. It is no wonder then that within minutes of the news of Dennis Ritchie passing away there has been a massive outpouring on Twitter and Facebook.
Ritchie was a seminal figure in the world of computers and helped change the landscape and the future of many young people right from the late 1960s. Here is sample of how people from all over the world are remembering Ritchie.
- Dennis Ritchie was born in 1941 in New York and went to Harvard to study Physics, but it was computers that caught his interest. Here is a video clip that highlights the story of Ritchie and Thompson, and provides a context of why their work was important.
In this video clip Ritchie and Thompson talking about that simple program they created that changed the world of computing.
- A couple of interviews with Dennis Ritchie that are worth reading.
- Interview with Dennis Ritchie, Bjarne Stroustrup, James GoslingThe C Family of Languages: Interview with Dennis Ritchie , Bjarne Stroustrup, and James Gosling. This article appeared in Java Report, 5(7), July 2000 and C++ ...
- Interview With Dennis Ritchie - The Inventor of Unix and CMay 31, 2011 ... what guided us was really kind of selfish—to write tools we could use ourselves to make our lives easier - kind'a hits home.
- Inventing Unix - IEEE SpectrumMay 26, 2011 ... An interview with Dennis Ritchie . By Samuel K. Moore, Steven Cherry / May 2011 . submit to reddit reddit. Slashdot. Digg! Digg. StumbleUpon ...
- Ritchie left behind an indelible mark in the world of computer programming. He will be missed.
