Dennis Ritchie Died

You may not realize this, but more than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, Dennis Ritchie created the modern computer environment. He invented the “C” language around 1970 and invented most of the original version of UNIX. Today, all operating systems are written in a dialect of “C” and UNIX is the operation system that is the inspiration for almost all modern computer systems. If you have an Apple computer you run a version of UNIX written in “C”. If you run a windows machine, Folders, permissions and most of the original ideas were stolen from UNIX, and Windows is largely written in “C” or a dialect of “C”.

Ritchie was a hacker who had an incredibly simple and obvious style of coding. He wrote the first “Hello World” program, which is the very first program that programmers are taught when the take up a language, any language. His solutions to problems were crystal clear. His concise way of expressing a concept is what made “C” language the language of choice for a generation. “C” is incredibly efficient, although it allows bad programmers to make incredible errors. A good programer can make “C” into poetry.

I learned to program by fooling around with code until something worked. I learned to program well by reading the thin volume, The C Programming Language, that Ritchie wrote with Brian Kernighan in 1978. It is still a treasured book that I will never sell.

The lessons that I learned from Dennis have been my livelihood for the last 20 years.  He was 70, and I am sorry that he has passed. He could have been coding for many more years.