Dennis Ritchie, legendary creator of the C programming language and co-inventor of the best operating system ever (UNIX), died earlier this week. He was 70.
Ritchie was every bit as influential as Steve Jobs in shaping our computing world. Perhaps even more influential than Jobs.
Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C programming language and co-creator of the Unix operating system, has died aged 70.
While the introduction of Intel’s 4004 microprocessor in 1971 is widely regarded as a key moment in modern computing, the contemporaneous birth of the C programming language is less well known. Yet the creation of C has as much claim, if not more, to be the true seminal moment of IT as we know it; it sits at the heart of programming — and in the hearts of programmers — as the quintessential expression of coding elegance, power, simplicity and portability.
Its inventor, Dennis Ritchie, whose death after a long illness was reported on Wednesday and confirmed on Thursday by Bell Labs, similarly embodied a unique yet admirable approach to systems design: a man with a lifelong focus on making software that satisfied the intellect while freeing programmers to create their dreams.