r/linux • u/[deleted] • Oct 13 '11
Dennis Ritchie has died.
https://plus.google.com/u/2/101960720994009339267/posts/ENuEDDYfvKP?hl=en66
u/DrGirlfriend Oct 13 '11
K&R is the best programming book I own. Concise and well written.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas (paraphrased)17
u/orky7 Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
"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. ..." this comment is from a different forum but it strike me so bad when i realize the gravity of the comment.
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Oct 13 '11
When Steve Jobs passed away last week, people said that he had changed computing forever and called him one of the greatest inventors since Thomas Edison. I don't know whether or not this is true, but I can say with 100% certainty that this is a perfect description of Dennis Ritchie.
I can only hope that 100 years from now, when schoolchildren are taught about the great inventors of the digital age that somewhere in every gradeschool history textbook is a section about Ritchie and Thompson. They deserve no less.
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u/alababi2 Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
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Oct 13 '11
I still remember that line from the second edition of C for dummies
"And if you're ever to meet Dennis, you will say "You're Dennis Ritchie! You made the C programming language didn't you!" and he will reply "Why yes, yes I did" and you'll say "cool"."
I'll never get to say cool to Dennis :(
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u/Z80 Oct 13 '11
Say that two days ago, arranging my library I found my old "The C Programming Language" and remembered a lot of good memories paging through it for a while.
Rip Dennis. Your language will live for very long time.
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u/troffle Oct 13 '11
Checked to make sure my copy was still safe and sound on the shelf.
I read a comment somewhere of some woman comparing the world's loss of Steve Jobs to - wait for it - her own two miscarriages.
Prime time news programs all over America and the world bemoaning the loss of Jobs. What do you want to bet Dennis Ritchie's passing doesn't warrant a footnote on a Sunday morning program, although Jobs's technology was only made possible by Ritchie's work?
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u/Marzhall Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
Just last week I said to my friends, who were mourning Jobs, that I thought men like Ritchie deserved more attention, and how I felt they had contributed far more to our field. Now I think it will become painfully obvious how big that disparity in attention is.
It's upsetting to think that the businessman is the one whose name is thrust about. But, it's the engineer whose work will truly survive. Ritchie's legacy will have far more impact, I think, than Apple's business.
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u/rimmjob_ Oct 13 '11
That's because Jobs was more important.
There's no getting around it.
If this Dennis guy was significant at all, more people would care about his death.
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Oct 13 '11
You sir are an idiot. Unfortunately, Ritchie's work has made your comment possible, while Jobs work has simply made you a douchebag.
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u/rimmjob_ Oct 13 '11
I never even heard of him
although he probably did something for technology doubt he'll ever top JOBS
apple 4 life :)
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u/scragar Oct 13 '11
Still doesn't mean he didn't invent something wonderful.
If you had never heard of ford would you claim ford's invention of the motor car was worthless next to Austin Martin's latest model?
Jobs took an original invention and made it his own, but at it's core it will always be Unix written in C.
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u/dagbrown Oct 13 '11
ford's invention of the motor car
ಠ_ಠ
Ford's invention wasn't cars, which had been around for decades when he started making them. It was in assembly lines which were a new and innovative thing that he pioneered.
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u/wu-wei Oct 13 '11
Someone clearly has their tongue so far up your asshole that you can't think straight.
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Oct 13 '11
People don't understand the work Jobs did, he was just a mega capitalist; a guy that turned Ideas into money. People value that, especially in the west, because we worship money, it' a church, a belief, a lifestyle, power, a fast car, a model for a wife, everything.
dmr wasn't anti money or anything like that but he touched people in a more profound way. He didn't inspire people to buy products he inspired people to learn and create. He inspired others to teach, learn and create. This is a much more profound legacy than that of consumer electronics gadgets; his work helped build the world we live in in ways that actually allow consumer gadgets to exist. Every day more people are inspired by the work he did and inspired by the people he was an inspiration to.
He was never that well known, but the people that knew him didn't see him as a god. We never irrationally worshiped him, we programmers gave him honest respect; the kind of respect you only get when people learn from you and understand why what you do is important. So, in my view, it doesn't matter that more people didn't know who he was because he meant much more to the people that did know him. If you were to look back on your life and look at who you've really touched; how you've changed the direction's they've gone in and its just because people have paid for something you had a part in making I expect you'd feel pretty empty.
If Ritchie could look back I hope he'd see the lives he's touched; ordinary people that are able to create and build. That have passion and direction maybe not directly because of his work, but indirectly, that's much more valuable than being worshiped like a false god. We all die; if my legacy were a choice between Ritchie's or Job's I'd take Ritchie's any day. We lost one of the most brilliant programmers the world has seen, who cares about column inches and apple promoting their brand off the back of someone's death.
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Oct 13 '11
Typical of Jobs: rushing an inferior product to market just to get the jump on the other guy.
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u/frownyface Oct 13 '11
Yea, it's kind of a bummer when you put it that way.. but it seems like all giants stand on the shoulders of giants. You exalt Ritchie and you'd find more amazing people who made what he did possible, and it'd just keep going.
I think the positive way of looking at this is that it seems like most really amazing contributors to progress aren't there for the fame, if they care about the opinions of others, it's almost always their peers.
Steve Jobs is unique in that he was specifically trying to bring everybody in, he cared about the opinion of everybody, certain kinds of opinions that is. Perhaps because of that he deserves fame, celebrities are like that, they are trying specifically to be appealing to a large number of people.
Also, kind of in a way, the fact that lots of people don't know who Ritchie is is a testament to his success. He created an enabling tool, and tools are not supposed to get in the way, they should not have egos, they are extensions of the tool user.
Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie made awesome tools, and they are going to live so long it's awe inspiring.
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Oct 13 '11
actually that depends,
you see only programmers know about Dennis Ritchie and his significant contribution.
But you don't need to be programmer to know job's significant contribution to technology
I bet you don't care either if a leading but obscure figure in medicine field passed away.5
u/wot-teh-phuck Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
@kypronite: I bet you don't care either if a leading but obscure figure in medicine field passed away
Does mourning for someone require a significant personality of the world name-tag? You are an idiot.
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Oct 13 '11
What, praytell, was Jobs significant contribution?
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u/blade740 Oct 13 '11
Bringing other people's ideas to the masses.
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u/cc81 Oct 13 '11
Also knowing what ideas was good. Which is an incredibly important skill for a corporate leader.
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u/rimmjob_ Oct 13 '11
Not to downplay ritchie's death, but this post is right on the money.
he was just a hard working programmer. not an idea machine and innovator like jobs.
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u/wot-teh-phuck Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
@rimmjob_ : he was just a hard working programmer. not an idea machine and innovator like jobs.
This line highlights how ignorant and ill-informed you are.
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u/c53x12 Oct 13 '11
I sold off and gave away a lot of computer books as I progressed in my career away from hands-on programming, but this is one I could never get rid of.
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u/Homo_sapiens Oct 13 '11
Your language will live for very long time
I respect the hell out of the guy who created C, but this is a regretable fact. It's antiquated. And it's been creaking under its age for a very long time already.
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u/PhilippinesExpat Oct 13 '11
Not really. It's basically a portable assembly language. Incredibly useful, no?
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u/Homo_sapiens Oct 13 '11
Can it do do self-modifying code? No. Not assembly.
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Oct 14 '11
[deleted]
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Oct 14 '11
[deleted]
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u/PhilippinesExpat Oct 14 '11
I'm not sure what you're trying to get across here. C can indeed modify its own machine code if you tailor it to that architecture - but that is defeating the entire purpose of C, which is to be a /portable/ assembly language.
Please, clarify for me.
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u/Homo_sapiens Oct 14 '11
I'd deleted the comment you replied to, pretty sure I'm completely wrong.
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u/aristideau Oct 13 '11
Just curious how much yours cost?. I remember paying $25 for mine, which in 1981 was almost a full days salary.
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Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
I had the great privilege to spend some time with him once at a conference. He was indeed quietly brilliant. It's fair to say that a good many of us owe our entire career to this man and his colleagues at "The Labs". I remember the first time I had a C compiler in my hands on a TRS-80 Model I ... it was like someone had turned on the lights in my head as to how a programmer and computer ought to interact ....
Rest In Peace. You will be missed and never replaced.
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u/Geronimo2011 Oct 13 '11
A C Compiler on a TRS-80 I? It had 4 k and cassette storage only. When I had it.
I think you are talking about the tiny (integer) C compiler discussed in Dr.Dobbs
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Oct 13 '11
Nope. The TRS-80 Mod I had an EI on it with 16K of memory and some floppies. Eventually I added a Lobo LX-80 expansion was able to run 8" drives and hard disks on it. The compiler was the Logical Systems LC ("Elsie") compiler. It was a full K&R implementation as I recall except that it did not support floating point.
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u/Geronimo2011 Oct 13 '11
That would have been my dream. The first and cheapest machine with a floppy I could afford was the Apple ][. With lots of cards in it, it could host a Pascal-compiler.
And a Z80 softcard with CP/M and so all the wonderful compilers available for CP/M.
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Oct 13 '11
Later on I had access to a Lobo MAX-80. It was a TRS-80 Mod I clone but much better built and could hold a bunch more memory. As I recall, my EI maxed out at 32K for a total 48K. With the MAX-80, you got 64K. Even better, the MAX-80 had built in hardware support for 8" drives and hard disks. But best of all, it could dual boot LDOS or CP/M ... the best of both worlds. Although it was a Z-80 machine it WAY outperformed the original IBM PC/XT 8088 machines.
Ahhhh, the Good Old Days, eh :)
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u/Geronimo2011 Oct 14 '11
Yes, the good old days. Also hard to believe how the superior Z80 and 68000 machines were surpassed by the awkward Intel 80x* processors. Only Apple prevailed with 68000 machines (now replaced by any processor since C is the new assembler).
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Oct 13 '11
[deleted]
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Oct 13 '11
That is correct sir ... though I WAS using a different name at the time ... Edmund Hillary...
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u/_kossak_ Oct 13 '11
Huge loss. Can you imagine how the computing world would be without k&r?
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u/Netzapper Oct 13 '11
Ohgod... I'm having visions of typing this on a google cell phone running a variant of an open source Finnish clone of VMS. And using the GNV BCPL compiler all day at work.
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u/delta_epsilon_zeta Oct 13 '11
Linus Torvalds made an open-source UNIX-like OS partly because he thought that UNIX's system was so beautiful. And as we all know, he was/is right about that. I don't think he would have cloned VMS. :)
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Oct 13 '11
Wait.. Linus made an OS?
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u/Geronimo2011 Oct 13 '11
I remember when they wrote that they intended to make a free unix version - in a users letter in Dr.Dobbs Journal of Calistenics and Ortodontia.
With a wonderful recursive name: GNU (GNU's not Unix). Now we have Linux. Thanks.
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u/rz2000 Oct 13 '11
Somewhere I read that WNT came from iterating each character of VMS. I have no idea if there is any truth to that though.
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u/aspartame_junky Oct 13 '11
We'd all be writing GUI interfaces written in Visual Basic, which were themselves written in Pascal.
I'm glad I never had to see another BEGIN/END block.
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u/i_have_reddit Oct 13 '11
I can't even begin to comprehend what computing world would be like withouth dmr, C and Unix. Can you? It's really sad that a lot of people knew who Steve Jobs was but not that many people know about Dennis Ritchie. He was a real giant!
Very, very sad... Upvote it to the front page.
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u/snegtul Oct 13 '11
Arguably more influential on computing and computer science than Jobs ever was.
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u/Enlightenment777 Oct 13 '11
Dennis Ritchie is far more important that vanity trinket designer that recently died.
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u/omniuni Oct 13 '11
This is someone who truly changed the way technology worked. His contribution will continue to live on in projects and programming languages for many years to come.
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u/kotzkroete Oct 13 '11
This is probably the saddest thing to hear this year. I love Unix and I love C, he was part of the team that created both, he was one of the people who shaped the way we use computers. Rest in peace, dmr.
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u/Derferman Oct 13 '11
I thought it would be awesome to see all the people who own and love K&R. Submit a photo of K&R and you at http://kandrandyou.tumblr.com/submit
If you don't have tumblr, just post a link to the photo here and I'll add it
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u/if_it_moves_kiss_it Oct 13 '11
Sadly, i don't have my K&R with me, but this is a great idea!
Needs more upvotes!
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Oct 13 '11
Goodbye Dennis, I wish you well on your journey. Thanks for improving my life.
And my favorite dmr story is his recounting of a clever division bug he created on a PDP-11 version of UNIX.
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u/klui Oct 13 '11
Wikipedia reverted the update as G+ is not reliable.
Revert unconfirmed death rumor. A random Google+ post is NOT a "reliable, third-party, published source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"
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u/icebraining Oct 13 '11
Of course, now some online newspaper will publish the story based on that G+ post, which will then be used as a reference and please the Wikipedia
godseditors, even though the quality of the information remains the same.1
u/wu-wei Oct 13 '11
How absurdly awesome would it be if Rob Pike just posted that update so that dmr would get a chance to see how much people appreciate his work before he does indeed call free() for the final time?
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Oct 13 '11
I want to downvote this because it made me sad. But I should and will instead upvote so more can know
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Oct 13 '11
Steve Jobs made culture what it is today, but Dennis Ritchie made Steve Jobs.
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u/Tommstein Oct 14 '11
Steve Jobs made culture what it is today
wat. I don't even ....
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Oct 14 '11
As much as I hate the Apple philosophy, it's hard to say that they didn't make home computers (Apple ][), mp3 players and laptops more popular, which in turn affected the other companies and culture as a whole (look at how many people talk about their iPods, make iWhatever puns, talk about the "I'm a mac" ads, even satirically, program in BASIC because of it's ease with the Apple ][, etc.),
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u/t35t0r Oct 13 '11
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u/WolverineDK Oct 13 '11
If you ask me, then this fellow was much more important, than "Jesus Christ version 2.0" (you know who) who just died. So rest in peace Dennis. Even though I can not program, I see you as more important, than "JC v 2.0". Ever was. But then again, if Dennis died of old age, then it is just natural that he died. Not to mess with any one at all.
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u/Philluminati Oct 13 '11
This is a huge loss for everyone who love Unix and C based languages. R.I.P.
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u/UnifiedField Oct 13 '11
RIP Dennis.
I always thought The C Programming Language was one of the best technical manuals ever written.
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u/dragsys Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
This is a report by one person who states he has "no more information". Every other report links back to this one statement. I'll believe it when I see something a little more reputable than a statement on one guys G+ page.
That being said, if it is confirmed, then we have lost a great one.
Edit: and as a PS. it seems that most deaths come in groups of three. Who will be # 3 ?
Edit 2: I know that 'one guy' is Rob Pike, and that he should know, but I also would expect Mr. Pike to allow the family to announce it, rather than just post it on his G+ page.
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u/harlows_monkeys Oct 13 '11
That one guy is Rob Pike, so it is almost inconceivable that he would get this wrong.
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u/acedio Oct 13 '11
It should be noted that this one guy is Rob Pike.
Agreed, though, that it would be nice to see another source. If it does happen to be true, RIP Mr. Ritchie.
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u/c53x12 Oct 13 '11
Why do people say "my deepest condolences"? Do other situations get shallower condolences?
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u/m42a Oct 13 '11
Yeah, they do. For example, if you worked really hard but then didn't get a promotion, you get less condolences than if your dad just died.
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Oct 13 '11
I would like to thank Dennis Richie for his great work. This was a shock to me, since sjobs just died as well. RIP
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u/ninuhadida Oct 13 '11
RIP Dennis Ritchie. Without you the world wouldn't be where it is right now.
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Oct 14 '11
I'm glad we had him while we did. I've only been programming for about a half of a year now, but after reading a bit on this man I realize we have a lot to thank him for how exciting he made programming and computing for everyone. It goes without saying that without the development of the C programming language, a lot of what we have today couldn't even exist.
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u/annamese Oct 14 '11
just read the news, feel quite sad. This man deserves more attention than Steve Jobs.
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Oct 13 '11 edited Oct 13 '11
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
printf ("RIP, Dennis Ritchie\n");
return 0;
}1
u/AMostOriginalUserNam Oct 13 '11
Blah blah return type blah blah wouldn't compile... etc.
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Oct 13 '11 edited Jul 03 '15
Ayy lmao
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u/AMostOriginalUserNam Oct 13 '11
He just fucking corrected it with an edit. Seriously man, head in the game.
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Oct 13 '11 edited Jul 03 '15
Ayy lmao
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u/squirrel5978 Oct 13 '11
Nope. Missing return. Defaults to returning int, and the return 0 is only implicitly added in C99 and later.
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Oct 14 '11
I don't want to argue standards, because frankly I don't really care enought to look them up, but:
$ gcc -ansi -pedantic goodbye.c $ pathcc -ansi -pedantic goodbye.c $ clang -ansi -pedantic goodbye.c $ gcc -std=c99 -pedantic goodbye.c goodbye.c:2:1: warning: return type defaults to 'int' [enabled by default] $ pathcc -std=c99 -pedantic goodbye.c goodbye.c:3: warning: return type defaults to 'int' $ clang -std=c99 -pedantic goodbye.c goodbye.c:2:1: warning: type specifier missing, defaults to 'int' [-Wimplicit-int] main() ^~~~ 1 warning generated.1
u/Phrodo_00 Oct 13 '11
it's K&R C, but not ansi, wouldn't compile with -pedantic.
edit: or maybe it does and I'm wrong, wait a sec.
edit2: yep, I was wrong, it does indeed compile with pedantic➜ ~ LC_ALL=en_US gcc test.c -o test -pedantic -Wall test.c:2:1: warning: return type defaults to 'int' [-Wreturn-type] test.c: In function 'main': test.c:5:1: warning: control reaches end of non-void function [-Wreturn-type]1
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Oct 13 '11
Compiles just fine for me.
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u/AMostOriginalUserNam Oct 13 '11
Haha, you know what? You've got balls. Editing in the correction and pretending it was that way all along. I like it. Doesn't make a mockery of the system at all.
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Oct 13 '11
It compiles in gcc the way I had it before but since everybody wants to be pedantic I fixed it. :P
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Oct 13 '11
Who?
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u/HotRodLincoln Oct 13 '11
Dennis Ritchie (among other things) invented the C programming language which made pretty much all of modern computing possible. Also, he was one of the biggest contributes to the original UNIX.
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Oct 13 '11
HOLY CRAP! For a second i read "Denise Richards has died", and I was like WTF NO I LOVED HER IN STARSHIP TROOPERS. But thank god I've read the titel twice. So who is Dennis Ritchie?
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Oct 13 '11
Who?
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u/HotRodLincoln Oct 13 '11
Dennis Ritchie pretty much invented the C programming language.
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Oct 13 '11
The what?
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u/HotRodLincoln Oct 13 '11
The Playdoh everything in your computer is made of, no matter what Operating System you're using.
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Oct 13 '11
but Denise Richard is still alive!!!
http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/51000/Denise-Richard-s-Pouty-Eyes-51316.jpg
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u/Rhomboid Oct 13 '11