Posted: 10/14/2011 3:12 AM
Post subject: Dennis Ritchie is dead
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p4wn3r
Player (42)
Joined: 12/27/2008
Posts: 873
Location: Germany
Lucky TAS of 2011 Gameboy TAS of 2011
Posting this here because it's not the kind of news that gets a lot of attention, and I think it's relevant to this site's users. Dennis Ritchie, best known as the inventor of the C programming language and one of the collaborators in the creation of the Unix operating system, passed away recently. His works have had strong influence on computing, the C programming language is widely used even today and has left its impact on more recent languages, and Unix also greatly influenced modern OS's, like Linux, BSD and OS X.
Posted: 10/14/2011 3:14 AM
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pirate_sephiroth
Active player (308)
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
New systems TAS of 2009
this death is so yesterday
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself. It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success." - Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Drama, too long, didn't read, lol.
Posted: 10/14/2011 3:16 AM
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p4wn3r
Player (42)
Joined: 12/27/2008
Posts: 873
Location: Germany
Lucky TAS of 2011 Gameboy TAS of 2011
October 8th, actually.
Posted: 10/14/2011 3:19 AM
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dunnius
Active player (423)
Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 329
Computer TASer of 2015 Computer TAS of 2015
Oh. :( I guess we will C him later. :)
Posted: 10/14/2011 4:33 AM
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CoolKirby
Editor, Experienced player (608)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 NES TAS of 2013
Wow, that's pretty tragic. Why didn't the media cover this?
Posted: 10/14/2011 8:53 AM
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petrie911
Joined: 7/16/2006
Posts: 635
He didn't die. He was cast into void.
Posted: 10/14/2011 3:22 PM
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Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
CoolKirby: because it's difficult to make the average person understand (and care about) the impact of his actions in a couple of sentences. We're a community that prizes programming and low-level understanding of computers, so we're going to be more interested in the people who made what we do possible. Similarly, I doubt we'd notice much if, say, an engineer who developed the techniques that make modern structural engineering (bridges, high-rises, etc.) possible had died, because that's not an area we think about much. Meanwhile all the engineers are going "Man this guy was awesome all you people who use the stuff he enabled don't even realize it what the heck is wrong with you?"
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 10/14/2011 3:29 PM
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Brandon
He/Him
Editor, Player (190)
Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 913
Location: Tennessee
R.I.P. I have been playing around with some things in C lately, and it really is brilliant and the foundation of every other useful language. I really wish we were learning about it in school instead of Java; oh boy do I hate Java.
All the best, Brandon Evans
Posted: 10/14/2011 3:36 PM
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Synahel
She/Her
Former player
Joined: 1/19/2011
Posts: 260
Location: France
C was the first computer language I studied (after learning a bit of basic myself), and my teacher used to start explanations by saying "as wrote Kernighan and Ritchie..." Rest in peace
Posted: 10/14/2011 7:27 PM
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HardcoreQC
Joined: 9/17/2011
Posts: 20
Location: Quebec, Canada
Oh god, we lost Steve Jobs and now, Dennis Ritchie.
Rayas wrote:
C was the first computer language I studied (after learning a bit of basic myself),
I also learned the C language too and C++ after. Rest in peace Dennis
Posted: 10/14/2011 7:32 PM
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Ferret_Warlord
Skilled player (1404)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
CoolKirby wrote:
Wow, that's pretty tragic. Why didn't the media cover this?
Because it's easier to hold massive press releases with front page newspaper coverage for fancy-pants touchscreen consumer electronics than it is to do so for dowhile loops and class types used by engineers. Steve Jobs had a public face; Dennis Ritchie was behind the scenes. Truth be told, I didn't even know the dude's name until this topic.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Posted: 10/14/2011 8:44 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
HardcoreQC wrote:
Oh god, we lost Steve Jobs and now, Dennis Ritchie.
Bad news always comes in threes. Add Einar Stefferud to the list.
Posted: 10/16/2011 12:03 AM
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HardcoreQC
Joined: 9/17/2011
Posts: 20
Location: Quebec, Canada
Warp wrote:
HardcoreQC wrote:
Oh god, we lost Steve Jobs and now, Dennis Ritchie.
Bad news always comes in threes. Add Einar Stefferud to the list.
O_oWell, I don't want to know who is the fourth!!!
Posted: 10/26/2011 7:16 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
HardcoreQC wrote:
O_oWell, I don't want to know who is the fourth!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_%28computer_scientist%29