
Rob Pike: Dennis Ritchie has died - fogus
https://plus.google.com/u/2/101960720994009339267/posts/ENuEDDYfvKP?hl=en
======
steveb
There are several billion people using many billions of devices every day.

From the code in your microwave to massive computing clusters, virtually all
of our software can trace its ancestry back to this man's intellectual output.

I'm eternally grateful for his life and contributions to humanity.

~~~
suivix
My question is if he didn't create a language like C, would someone else have?
Was it such a leap from existing languages?

~~~
bgurupra
The same thing can be said for pretty much every invention/innovation ever
made even if it was a huge leap from the prior art - but then he was the one
who did it and I guess that is what matters at the end

------
5hoom
This is really sad. Dennis Ritchie has made an incalculably huge contribution
to the tech world.

I know most here would be aware, but he is a father of both Unix and the C
language, technologies which are the basis for nearly everything we as
developers do. He helped write K&R, which many regard as _the_ book for C
programming.

This is the passing of a legend. Sincerest condolences to his family and
friends.

~~~
bch
Not only is K&R _the_ book for C, it's an example for engaging, lucid, just-
right technical writing that any technical manual should strive for.

~~~
kalid
That book is a reminder of a time when Wrox & friends weren't trying to crank
out 5 lb tomes on .NET SOAP Interoperability. So many modern books read like a
student trying to pad out a page count for a professor.

~~~
davidw
I wonder what will happen to books like this, as these guys pass away. For
instance, I don't see updated versions of Stevens' books, which are classics
in their own right with regards to network and systems programming on Unix. I
learned a ton of things from those, and wow, they're sure beautiful books.

~~~
bch
Hey @davidw.

We can hope that they might receive similar treatment as John Ousterhout's
"Tcl and the Tk Toolkit" did. JOs work (including TatTT) is often held up as
excellent writing as well. The second ed. of that book was updated by a group
of experts w/ JOs blessing, but w/o his participation if I understand
correctly. Indeed @davidw was a contributor to that project ;) (thx. david.)

------
InclinedPlane
If you have used technology of any sort over the last few decades there's a
pretty decent chance that you've used technology that Steve Jobs had a
significant impact on.

But the chances are 100.00% that you've used technology Dennis Ritchie has had
a deeply profound impact on.

~~~
xxpor
Including all of the tech that Steve Jobs had a significant impact on.

~~~
keidian
Exactly. When I first found out about dmr, I really really hoped the stories
will flood in here after the massive Steve Jobs amount. Not to take anything
away from Steve, but dmr is far more important in my opinion, and I'm sure
many other geeks would agree. I'm glad he isn't just quietly being forgotten
like I feared he would.

~~~
chugger
DMR created. SJ inspired.

let's not compare both.

~~~
sid0
_let's not compare both._

Ah yes, the cognitive dissonance of an Apple fanboy developer who knows that C
is far more important than anything SJ ever did yet can't reconcile that with
their belief that SJ was god.

Shame on Hacker News's audience that the front page isn't filled up with
Dennis stories right now.

~~~
biot

      > C is far more important than anything SJ ever did
    

That's like saying the paintbrush is far more important than the paintings of
Michelangelo or da Vinci.

~~~
skeptical
A paintbrush is indeed far more important than the painting of Michel Angelo
or da Vinci from an historical point of view.

On top of that, there are thousands of programming language today, many
relying deeply on concepts and paradigms that are much younger than C itself,
but C remains one of the most used languages. Not only C is very much used,
it's still the only option in many cases and it is by far, the language that
is most used to implement other languages, or at least to bootstrap them.

Considering the age of the paintbrush comparing to, say, spray ink, your
analogy is in fact, not only valid, but a very good one.

------
rkalla
I wonder how many people here got to know Ritchie through "The C Programming
Language", I am sure half of us have it on our shelves.

It is amazing how many lives a single person can touch directly and
indirectly.

I hope Ritchie passed away knowing the unforgettable contribution he made to
the world as we all move forward on a platform he set down for us more than 30
years ago.

What an awesome legacy to leave behind. Thank you Dennis.

~~~
smoyer
I'm old enough that K&R was the bible when I started with Borland's Turbo C
1.0. Another sad day for computer science.

~~~
barrkel
alnayyir, you've been hellbanned. In case you didn't know.

~~~
nitrogen
That must've been one seriously downvoted comment to get someone with over
2000 karma to a -2 average.

~~~
burgerbrain
It was a series of comments I believe, in which he began taunting the people
downvoting him to downvote him more.

------
bootload

        #include <stdio.h> 
        main()
        {
            printf("goodbye, world\n");
        }

~~~
pjscott
Considering the tragic nature of the situation, the exit status should be
nonzero.

    
    
        #include <stdio.h>
        
        int main(void) {
            printf("goodbye, world\n");
            return 1;
        }

~~~
phillco
What if he died peacefully?

    
    
        return 0;

~~~
pjscott
Dying peacefully is still dying.

    
    
        return 1;

~~~
gamache
All things die, and I consider him successful.

    
    
      return 0;

------
luckydude
Any chance we could get the guy who did the Steve Jobs Apple logo to take a
wack at doing one for Dennis?

I've never met Dennis but I've talked to him on the phone a bit, and exchanged
a pile of email over the years, all about various Unix topics. Though I was
nobody, he was always polite, always patient, always willing to pass on
knowledge. I'm quite grateful to him for taking the time to exchange ideas and
polish them.

bwk is the same way. We were working on extending awk to be, well, different
(we made awk scripts be part of awk, so any statement could be a script and it
could pipe to another script). I talked bwk about the idea and asked if I
could do on top of his awk and the next day a tarball showed up of ~bwk/awk,
had the source, all the regressions, the source the awk book, everything.

I love these guys, they did a lot of things I admire.

~~~
shazow
I didn't have anything to do with any of the Steve Jobs Apple logo tributes,
but here's my take on a Dennis one:

[https://plus.google.com/109834643338395014064/posts/CWHKvH7d...](https://plus.google.com/109834643338395014064/posts/CWHKvH7dawg)

------
DanielRibeiro
To remember[1]:

 _Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist notable for
developing C and for having influence on other programming languages, as well
as operating systems such as Multics and Unix._

 _He received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology
1998 on April 21, 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System
Software Research Department when he retired in 2007._

 _"C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success."_

 _\- Dennis Ritchie, on The Development of the C Language[2]_

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie>

[2] <http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html>

------
Shenglong
Black bar, definitely deserved. Thanks pg.

------
jburwell
Two visi0naries lost in one week. Unfortunately, Dennis Ritchie's passing will
not get the level of coverage of Steve Jobs, but he deserves it. Without his
critical contributions, the UNIX core of Steve Jobs' great products could not
exist ...

------
fjarlq
:( Thank you, Dennis.

dmr posted to Usenet quite often over the years:

<http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=research!dmr>

[http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=dmr@research.UU...](http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=dmr@research.UUCP)

<http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=dmr@alice.UUCP>

[http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=dmr@research.at...](http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=dmr@research.att.com)

[http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=dmr@bell-
labs.c...](http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?user=dmr@bell-labs.com)

~~~
joeyh
"Sorry, we could not find any information on research!dmr." -- google

Well then, here are some of his first usenet posts:
<http://olduse.net/blog/Dennis_Ritchie/>

The one on dsw is especially good.

    
    
        SYNOPSIS
             (put number in console switches)
             dsw
             core

~~~
fjarlq
Hit reload a few times and it'll come up. Google Groups has been flaky for a
while now.

------
drallison
Dennis was a friend. It is very sad to learn of his passing. We are all
indebted to him for his many contributions to the field.

------
kiba
70 years. That's a long time to be alive! He was born in the middle of WW2,
lived through the cold war, seen the collapse of the soviet union, etc.

Me? I was born around the time the Linux OS hatched and the internet is
starting to open up.

~~~
melling
70 years isn't long at all. 100 is the new old:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenarian>

With a bit more research, many people could live to be 90-100.

~~~
strait
Alan Turing would be 99 if he were alive today.

~~~
tomjen3
And he would have been if social conservatives hadn't destroyed him.

god damn I fucking hate them.

~~~
dmm
Turing's destruction is more complicated than just prosecution by
conservatives. He had access to extremely secure information over a period of
years, this is what drew attention to his homosexuality.

When someone gets a security clearance, what do you think is looked for? Not
many spies or people who eventually divulge information to an enemy country
have explicit ties, eg. they aren't a member of a communist party. What is
investigated are characteristics that would make a person likely to be
influenced: debts, addictions, gambling problems or, as in Turing's case, some
sort of socially unaccepted lifestyle.

Around the time of Turing's conviction, several other homosexuals had been
convinced by the soviets to become double agents, eg. Anthony Blunt and Guy
Burgess. Turing also made regular trips to the continent to pursue sexual
relationships. This is what inspired the indecency charges. That's my
understanding at least.

Please understand, what happened to Turing was terrible. No one deserves that
fate. I really do wish he could have escaped somehow. That said I don't think
the situation was as simple as social conservatives destroying people.

~~~
tomjen3
The reason they could blackmail those people was that those in charge had made
homosexuality illegal. None these defections had to happen and nobody seems to
think Turing was embaressed about his homosexuality, so if it is not illegal
what would there be to blackmail him about?

And what happened wasn't terrible. Losing your best friend to cancer is
terrible. Accidents are terrible. This was entirely done by monsters (they may
be of the species homo sapiens but they aren't human) and it was a monstrous
crime.

Edit: _sorry, that is the last time I will write hn comments from my phone_

~~~
dmm
> done by monsters

If you believe that every despicable act in that past was done by monsters
then you will waste your time looking for monsters. Instead you should be
looking for human beings, who always have justifications, they are the ones
who will be doing the despicable acts of the future.

You absolute ignorance of the events you are ranting about does everyone a
disservice.

------
dgallagher
His brother was superintendent while I was in high school. We asked him to
invite dmr to come in and give a speech once, but understandingly dmr was too
busy and had to decline. If dmr was anything like his brother, he was a great
person and will be missed greatly. RIP, you changed the world for the better.

------
protomyth
I learned BASIC and 6502 assembly in high school then went to college where
the main language was Modula-2 on an IBM 370. I hated Modula-2 and wondered
how people actually wrote those cool programs on PCs. It just seems like all
the possibilities of assembly really weren't there. It just seemed wrong.

Took an optional language class in C which used the K&R C book (draft ANSI C
edition) taught on the VAX and was finally able to say "Oh, I get it now".
Bought Turbo C 2.0 and had a blast.

This is just a truly sucky month.

------
navs
I'll have to admit, I didn't know who Dennis Ritchie was. I remember seeing
his name on the Unix Haters Handbook but that was it. Noticing the black bar,
I googled and now, I'm enlightened. It's a pity many will never know his name
or his contributions but if it means anything, this here Computer Science
student would like to say Thank You Mr. Ritchie for all you've done.

------
jbondeson
It almost seems impossible to imagine men like Ritchie leaving us. His efforts
helped usher in the modern computing age.

While he is no longer with us in person, may his legacy never be forgotten by
those of use who have had the honor to stand on his titanic shoulders.

Truly he will be missed.

------
moeffju
Just looking at the stuff on my desk, the only things Dennis Ritchie has not
directly or indirectly contributed to are two photos, a pair of scissors, a
screwdriver and a salami.

Cellphone? Check. Harddisks? Screens? USB devices? TAN generator? Wacom
tablet? Applet remote? Mac mini? MacBook Pro? Camera? Check, check, check.

Thanks, Dennis Ritchie, for helping to create the foundations of computing as
we know it.

~~~
revorad
Those photos, scissors, screwdriver and _even the salami_ probably involved
using a computer at some stage. So he did contribute indirectly.

------
latch
I used to read The C Programming Language every year. As a amateur tech-
writer, it has influenced me greatly (that and _why's work).

------
maayank
While I dabbled with the language before, The C Programming Language book was
a true eye opener for me. Grokking it truly paved the way for my programming
career.

RIP Dennis Ritchie.

------
iradik
<http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ken-and-den.jpg>

<http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html>

<http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html>

------
Hitchhiker
#include <stdio.h>

main() { printf("Thank you for creating me\n"); printf("RIP,Mr.Ritchie\n"); }

------
packetslave
Didn't know him personally, but his work has been an inspiration to me for
nearly 20 years. RIP.

------
peteri
I read K&R at university in 1986 and found it to be a model of clarity, spent
a year supporting Turbo C for Borland when it was first released (that
improved my language knowledge no end)

Biggest problem was the first Turbo C compiler folded floating point constant
division back to front which makes one of the early programs in K&R
(Centigrade to Farenheit conversion) fail. That got fixed fairly quickly.

He leaves behind a truly amazing legacy of C, *nix and the K&R book.

------
Sindisil
Damn.

That hit me harder than I would have thought possible.

The family of man is poorer for his passing, regardless of how few may know
why.

Wow. I don't know if I'm at a loss for words, or have too much to say, but I'm
really having a hard time putting my thoughts into a brief post.

Rest in peace, dmr.

------
irrumator
One of the most influential people in the world whose contributions were
immense. He will be sorely missed.

------
johnohara
For some odd reason I pulled my 1978 version of The C Programming Language off
the shelf and it's been on my desk for the past few weeks.

Beneath the copyright notice it reads:

"This book was set in Times Roman and Courier 12 by the authors, using a
Graphic Systems phototypesetter driven by a PDP-11/70 running under the UNIX
operating system."

Probably on a VT100 with drafts printed on a DECWriter.

Quiet. Brilliant. Deliberate. Influential. Modest.

May you rest in peace.

------
spodek
His great works had such amazing style -- simple, elegant, meaningful,
effective. I think this sentence, which he not only co-authored but also
executed on, summarizes it in plain English, all the more so when you read it
from the small book in your hands.

"C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book."

These words have guided my writing as much as anything in Elements of Style.

------
djmdjm
It's a testament to the quality and reach of his vision that these words are
coming to you via systems that recognisably Unix and written in C _40 years_
after Ritchie (and colleagues) created their progenitors. His work has
literally defined generations of operating systems and languages and seems
likely to continue to do so for some time. What a great...

------
jmags
While this is very sad, I think he would have wanted us to remember that
working in a field so young that you have occasion to mourn people who built
its foundations is inherently exciting.

------
desireco42
black stripe on top of hacker news is really nice touch out of respect

------
ltamake
Very sad. His contributions to the world were huge. RIP.

~~~
bch
They were huge, and still are. 40 years on, his work is the basis for a lot of
what's interesting in tech right now.

------
rbanffy
I noticed every computer around me, be it a laptop, a phone, a TV or a router,
runs some kind of Unix.

~~~
mahmud
Live free or die!

Dennis lives somewhere in time.

------
ctdonath
free(DennisRitchie);

~~~
doyoulikeworms
DennisRitchie = NULL;

------
simon
DMR was one of my heroes. Rest In Peace Sir.

I learned C from the first edition of K&R back in 1989 (iirc) on an Atari ST
using the Sozobon C compiler. Happy memories (except for learning to combine
pointers and loops and null terminated strings correctly! :-)

------
DodgyEggplant
RIP. It seems they are into a big project up there.

------
scrrr
When I was a student a professor joked that computer science wasn't really a
science because all its founders were still alive. Well, now it certainly must
be one.

~~~
burgerbrain
Either you're quite old or your professor forgot about Alan Turing. :/

------
zizee
I'm didn't know the man but it's always sad to see one of the greats fall.

I seem to have mislaid my copy of the 'The C Programming Language', which is a
shame as it is one of the few of the many programming books I have purchased
over the years that continues to be relevant in this fast changing (and
exiting) field.

RIP dmr, my condolences to your family and friends. You will be missed and
your contributions appreciated by hackers the world over.

------
sharmajai
C, like thousands of other computer science students, was the first language I
learnt.

I have always felt that a language is only as popular as the niche it serves.
For C that niche started out as OS implementation and expanded into driver
programming, UI programming, embedded systems programming, graphics
programming, and many many more disciplines.

There was Fortran and PL/1 before C, what made C so popular? I will let dmr's
friend Brian Kernighan answer it:

 _C is perhaps the best balance of expressiveness and efficiency that has ever
been seen in programming languages. At the time it was developed, efficiency
mattered a great deal: machines were slow and had small memories, so one had
to get close to the efficiency of assembler. C did this for system programming
tasks--writing compilers, operating systems and tools. It was so close to the
machine that you could see what the code would be (and it wasn't hard to write
a good compiler), but it still was safely above the instruction level and a
good enough match to all machines that one didn't think about specific tricks
for specific machines. Once C came along, there no longer was any reason for
any normal programmer to use assembly language. It's still my favorite
language; if I were marooned on a desert island with only one compiler, it
would have to be for C._ [1]

If I have to pick one reason for C's popularity, it would be pointers (both
function and data) alongwith type casting. IMHO this was the combination that
not only gave you full control of the underlying hardware (other languages had
done that too) but most importantly it enabled other programming paradigms,
(functional, object oriented etc.), while doing that.

Thanks for introducing us to the wonderful world of computer programming. RIP
DMR.

1\. <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7035>

------
OctaneOps
RIP. His life exemplifies:

“Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something
from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing Knowledge
occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new
capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.”- Peter Senge

------
glhaynes
An exemplar of elegance and clear thought. RIP and thank you.

------
jasiek
I remember attending one of his lectures on Plan 9 back in 1996 at Bell Labs.
It's a shame he's gone now.

------
grosales
I still remember the first time I picked up K&R. I tried my best to devour it.
The technical prose makes the book a tour de force. Every time I write a new
"hello world" program from now on, I will add a "Thanks dmr" at the end. May
you rest in peace dmr.

------
greenyoda
Goodbye, Dennis. It's been just over 30 years since I picked up K&R and
started programming in C and using 7th Edition Unix on a PDP-11/45. And C is
still among the languages I program in today. You'll be missed.

------
baabuu
RIP Dennis.

I was an uninterested Computer science student bored with writing stupid BASIC
programs. Then I got introduced to C which made me realize what studying
computers is all about. Then I got to know Unix and Linux. I still remember
the day I got my Unix login. I was the first student to get one! My college
projects (Linux clusters, routers), my geek friends, my first job and my
professional life - all got started by learning C & Unix in a remote
university lab thousands of miles away. I'm sure this is a story shared by
millions. Thanks dmr! You are a legend!

------
Mithrandir
I wish I could say I met the man, but it doesn't really matter to me because
in a way I've got to kinda know him indirectly through his work; through UNIX-
likes and what little I know of C.

So RIP, you crazy tinkerer.

------
srl
c--; /* to echo a sentiment expressed on g+ */

------
sajid
This has been a sad week.

Whenever I'm learning a new language, I always look for but fail to find a
book with the clarity, conciseness and completeness of K&R.

~~~
Swannie
Ditto.

------
breadbox
Very sad. RIP, dmr.

------
kachnuv_ocasek
I'm far more struck by this than Steve Jobs' death.

------
gsivil
K&R is the only book that I have currently three copies. Two editions in
English and one in Greek. RIP DR

------
just4DMR
Rest in Peace, Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie. True Hacker Knight, Shinning Armor.

This is just for you. You will be missed.

------
revorad
Condolences to family and friends. C was my first programming language. Owe a
lot to this man.

What a sad week.

------
rooshdi
"I'm not a person who particularly had heros when growing up."

Thank you for being one of ours, RIP Dennis

------
flipper
To paraphrase the epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren - if you seek his monument,
log in.

------
_THE_PLAGUE
The K&R textbook is still my programming "bible". I don't use C on a regular
basis, or at least as not as much as I'd like to, but still refer to it, even
so. IMO, people should learn C first - teaches the right principles.

------
robert_nsu
RIP Dennis Ritchie. I can't honestly say that I've spent an entire day at work
over the last five years without looking at something that was either created
by him or inspired from his work.

------
josephcooney
very sad. I love the writing style of 'The C Programming Language'

------
amanicdroid
Because of Dennis Ritchie I can type these words and others can read them.

;_;

------
raymondh
Goodbye Dennis. You were a giant. You'll be missed.

------
codehalo
Dennis Ritchie. Hello World. May he rest in peace.

------
icehawk
How sad. RIP, dmr.

------
teja1990
I you have ever used a computer or any programming language , it means that
you used some thing that has Dennis Ritchie's impact.

------
sixtofour
I still have K&R on my shelf.

Thank you, DMR.

------
stellzzz
Мир праху твоему, пусть земля будет пухом. /* Рус. _/ Rest In Peace /_ Eng. */

------
0x12
It's a sad month.

------
velagale
RIP Mr.Ritchie !

------
jianxioy
Rest in peace.

------
giis
thanks Ritchie,for your great contribution, Without you ,I'm sure,we won't be
what we are now. RIP.

------
petegrif
This is an unusually good piece.

------
1337p337
The |s, the |s are calling.

------
unfletch
.

------
kang
Father of modern software

------
deepinit_a
We owe You Dennis...

------
cyber_lis
I'm really sad...

------
nikhizzle
int main(int argc, char _argv[]) { struct passwd_ pw = getpwnam('dmr');
restInPeace(pw->pw_uid); exit(0); }

------
7h
i'm from russia and very bad know english...

RIP

------
berserkpi
RIP master.

------
resnamen
free(dmr);

------
mkramlich
two weeks in a row...

------
chugger
Oh god. Another legend I truly admire. :(

------
goodnight
RIP Dennis. Now that's a guy worth mourning about.

I'll check CNN and the BBC to see their special reports, surely if they had
them when some marketing CEO kicked the bucket they'll give at least ten times
the amount of coverage to a man who was 100 times his better!

~~~
m0nastic
In the realm of news, almost no one knows who Dennis Ritchie was. You can
lament that fact (obviously, to anyone even remotely related to computing he
was a figure of paramount importance), but it's ridiculous to expect the
mainstream press to understand that importance.

Analogies are tenuous, but when Michael Jackson died, it was obviously big
news. It was all over television. Nobody reported when Ross Snyder‡ died, even
though his influence was of great importance. That's the way these things
work.

‡If anyone didn't know, Ross invented the multitrack recorder, one of the most
transformative tools in music production.

~~~
Swannie
Regard Ross Snyder, I distinctly recall a televised report about it on BBC
News.

~~~
m0nastic
Yay, that helps reinforce my misguided American belief that the BBC is still a
quality news organization!

------
jerrysievert
C

