RIP Dennis Ritchie
Oct. 12th, 2011 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiranlightpawUnlike Steve Jobs, unless you're in the tech industry, there's a pretty fair chance you've never heard of Dennis Ritchie.
However, to those of us who make a living writing software, Dennis Ritchie was well known as the creator of the C language (considered by many to be the "mother tongue" of computer programming languages - the language from which many, many others were derived). He was also one of the key developers of UNIX, which underpins the majority of computers on the planet (directly including OS X, indirectly Linux and many others - here's a "family tree" of everything descended from UNIX).
Considering that PHP, the language I primarily work in, and Objective-C, my current favorite language both derive from C, I'd say I owe Dennis a pretty significant debt. I raise my glass to you, Mr. Ritche. RIP.
However, to those of us who make a living writing software, Dennis Ritchie was well known as the creator of the C language (considered by many to be the "mother tongue" of computer programming languages - the language from which many, many others were derived). He was also one of the key developers of UNIX, which underpins the majority of computers on the planet (directly including OS X, indirectly Linux and many others - here's a "family tree" of everything descended from UNIX).
Considering that PHP, the language I primarily work in, and Objective-C, my current favorite language both derive from C, I'd say I owe Dennis a pretty significant debt. I raise my glass to you, Mr. Ritche. RIP.