Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

RIP Dennis Ritchie

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 13, 2011

Dennis Ritchie, 1941 – 2011
Creator of the “C” programming language, by far the most influential programming language of all time. Also a key developer of the Unix operating system. If you have ever used Java, C#, Javascript, PHP, C++, TorqueScript, or one of a slew of other programming and “scripting” languages, Ritchie was a critical influence.

Jobs, now Ritchie… I still have a mental image of the software industry being such a young, new field. And with respect to many other industries, it still is. So it’s weird seeing some of these industry pioneers go the way of all the Earth.


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  • RandomGamer said,

    Basically, if you’ve browsed the web (Unix Servers still server most webpages), sent an email (ditto for most mailservers – still Unix based), used Android (based on Linux, which is based on Unix), iOS (based on MacOS, which is based on BSD, which is Unix), Blackberry OS (based on QNX which is Unix), Windows (written in C), MacOS (based on BSD which is Unix) or pretty much any computer (most OSes, drivers and other low level stuff is written in C) anywhere, you’ve used something based on his work. Crazy legacy, that. Absolutely staggering.

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