RE: Code in peace: remembering Dennis Ritchie, father of C & Unix

fustini — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:00:25 GMT

I just saw a tweet from Jon "Maddog" Hall (old school DEC Unix guy, creator of the 'Live Free or Die' UNIX license plate) that he has written a short blog post with insight on Ritchie:

http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog/RIP-Dennis

I first learned of Ritchie's passing last night via a Facebook post by Maddog. Ironically, I had only become "friends" with Maddog on Monday. I had the great pleasure to meet him and listen to his many tales of Unix folklore this past weekend at UIUC's ACM conference. I think he liked me when I said my favorite book is "Quarter Century of Unix" [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-56bdbde6-5a93-4479-8c70-b22e78f1d1bd/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

Cheers,

Drew

RE: Code in peace: remembering Dennis Ritchie, father of C & Unix

DAB — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:42:50 GMT

I suspect the Dr. Ritchie was amazed that his C language would continue to be used forty years or so after he created it. I think only BASIC has survived as long and both are still serving the purpose they were designed for. C to create code portable between different types of processors and BASIC for learning the concepts of programming.

The best ideas always show up in the test of time. Regardless of your opinion on C and UNIX, you have to admit that there has not been any other language or operating system that has seen the proliferation or ubiquity in applications as both have had to date.

DAB

PS; My first computer was a PDP-11, which I began using in 1972.