The Passing of Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, more commonly known as Dennis Ritchie, passed away on October 8, 2011.  While the recent demise of Apple's front man, Steve Jobs received world-wide attention, Dennis's passing was not even mentioned on some of the mainstream news outlets.  Possibly, only those who have studied computer science or have been involved with programming, would have heard about him.  This is a great shame, such is the importance of Dennis's work that anyone who has used a computer, Internet or smartphone would have benefited from his contribution to computer science and technology!  So here is my little contribution in paying tribute to him.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

With his long beard and hair, Dennis Ritchie was the archetypical computer scientist and hacker.  He was best known as the creator of the C computer programming language and one of the original developers of the Unix operating system.  The influence that C has over an entire generation of programmers and software developers as well as latter computer languages cannot be overstated.  I still remember first learning about C around 1986/87 using the classic Kernighan and Ritchie book on the language, "The C Programming Language".

In addition to C, Dennis of course was one of the key developers of Unix.  Unix played a pivotal role in influencing either directly or indirectly all the popular modern operating systems in use today.  Without Unix there will not be Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, iOS or Android - the last two systems of course powering the majority of mobile devices in use today.

So it is indeed a great loss to modern technology and to the computing world in particular with the passing of Dennis Ritchie.  However, we may take solace in the thought that while Dennis is no longer here with us, his ideas and legacy live on and everytime we use our computers, the Internet or smartphones, we are touched by a little bit of his genius.

Soo Hoe Nah

October 2011

Two Ships Passing

Took this photo over the weekend at the Vancouver Cruise Terminal. These two cruise ships reminded me of the poem by Henry Wadsworh Longfellow, which goes something like this:

"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow