Dennis Ritchie [September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011]

[Autumnlicious]

Yesterday, a veritable icon of the computing age passed away. Dennis Ritchie, the father of C and Unix, AKA the guy who ALL this modern day computing possible, built the tools and forged the area of computer science from an academic curiosity into a practical industry through his wisdom and accomplishments.

REF: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/201...s-ritchie/
REF: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/13/...assed-away

Without Ritchie, Steve Jobs would've been designing shoes and showing off his newest dress, not dictating his vision for the next consumer computing appliance.

Without Ritchie, Bill Gates wouldn't even have Windows, let alone any computer OS.

Without Ritchie, every computer that we look at and rely on, would not be here.

His work started an era that has not let up.

Dennis -- with gratitude, I thank you for you work. Rest in Peace.

exit(0);

[5thHorseman]

You can stick your iPhone where it don't fit right, without men like Ritchie, Jobs + Gates are McDonalds servers.

[Jackalope]

The dog-eared copy of "The C Programming Language" on my desk is testament to the fact that my career was made possible due to Ritchie's work, along with Kerninghan and Stevens.

[Cinjin]

Don't know who the hell he was - but it does seem he was highly beneficial to the human race in the short time he lived - and for that, I can say, Rest In Peace Sir.

[Jackalope]

Don't know who the hell he was - but it does seem he was highly beneficial to the human race in the short time he lived - and for that, I can say, Rest In Peace Sir.

He and Brian W. Kerninghan were responsible for both UNIX and the C language.

[affirmedatheist]

Don't know who the hell he was - but it does seem he was highly beneficial to the human race in the short time he lived - and for that, I can say, Rest In Peace Sir.

As said above Dennis Ritchie designed UNIX and the C Programming Language.

UNIX:
An operating system which has had a very large influence on Linux, the BSD, Minix, and a few others as well. How is this relevant? At least half of all internet servers run on Linux (probably more). Most of the top 500 fastest computers in the world are running some sort of Linux distribution. Apple's Mac OSX is a variant of BSD (specifically, a variant of Darwin).

The C Programming Language:
Just about every operating system known to modern man is written in C, or has been at some point. Many other programs are also still programmed in C. C also had C++ as a spinoff - and even more programs are written based on C++.

Bottom Line:
You'd probably still be sitting in a basic command-driven environment without C - if you still had a computer at all.