This year we lost two great tech founders, Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie.
Steve Jobs death was plastered all over the news and media, and it should be. Steve Jobs was a great visionary who changed the world. I’m typing this on my MacBook Pro with my iPhone sitting right next to me. I love Apple.
Dennie Ritchie was also a great man of technology. He was less public than Jobs, but in my opinion more influential than Steve Jobs. Dennis Ritchie created the programming language C, which is foundational to almost all modern programming languages, including Objective-C, the language that all iPhone apps are written in. Ritchie is also the father of Unix, the operating system that powers most of the internet, and all Mac computers. Macs are known for their stability. That stability comes from it’s operating system, a modified version of Unix. Without Ritchie, Apple wouldn’t exist. Despite how influential Dennie Ritchie was, I didn’t see a single news story on his death.
I respect both of these men and honor the things they created. Without them my life would be much different. In a perfect world the people behind the scenes, like Dennis Ritchie, would get true attention and notoriety they truly deserve.
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Let me answer this with a question. When you look at a painting do you care more about the master piece over all or the brand of paint the artist used. This is akin to that comparison. I am not saying one is better then the other just pointing out why one is more praised then the other. Without the paint the painting wouldn’t exist but be honest no one cares what brand was used.
Using your analogy, if the inventor of modern paint died, shouldn’t all of the painters of the world take a moment to respect and remember the person that made their profession possible?
I understand that Jobs is way more known than Ritchie. I just wish that Ritchie got more attention when he died.
Taking paint as an example is bad, i mean paint is a recourse, UNIX is a base.
It’s like a drawing book, the lines are there but they just need coloring.
The coloring is very important but the base is the most important to me.
I agree with you 100% man. I posted this all over my FB and was sad when i mentioned his name and no one even knew what i was talking about.. but they all had an Iphone..
Found this blog entry randomly. I was just reading about the Non-abstract method::save() must contain body entry before.
Surely Ritchie’s efford has to be considered more valuable than Job’s. Designing and Developing C and Unix in my Opinion is way more difficult than creating a GUI. As far as I know that was what Steve Jobs had done primarily.
Further nowadays a FBI report became public mentioning that Jobs used to take drugs in his youth. Not having any such information about Ritchie the athlete without doping won.