

Requiem for Bell Labs, Unit 1127 (2007) - pmoriarty
http://www.tuxdeluxe.org/node/113

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spiritplumber
You know what was sad? When Dennis Ritchie died and almost nobody noticed
because they were busy mourning Steve Jobs.

~~~
Golf_Hotel_Mike
The average Joe on the street never directly interacted with nor was directly
affected by Dennis Ritchie's work. Since the greater population had never
heard of him, they weren't going to be as emotionally affected by his passing.
Popular media knew which way the wind was blowing and decided to devote more
time and energy to mourning Jobs, because they need their pageviews.

That's not to say the Ritchie wasn't mourned by the people he most closely
associated with. My university's CS department held a one minute silence
before morning lectures the day after he died. I'm sure other CS people around
the world did something similar too. But Ritchie was simply not a global
celebrity the way Jobs was, so you can't expect them to be remembered the same
way.

