[Info-vax] RIP: Dennis Ritchie (UNIX / C)

[Neil Rieck]

On Oct 13, 9:43 pm, "Forster, Michael" <mfors... at mcw.edu> wrote:
> A story from AP:
>
> Dennis Ritchie, computer-programming pioneer, dies<http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16036/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=CNLtbdwb>

Yep, while everyone went mental when Steve Jobs died on Oct 5, only
the technical world seems to be aware of the passing of Dennis Ritchie
on Oct 12.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/thedennisritchieeffect/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

To make matters worse, the world seems to be unaware that Apple's "MAC
OS X" is based upon UNIX.

I'm not saying that Steve Jobs was a slouch, but in hindsight I think
it is fair to say that the work of Dennis Ritchie changed the world in
more ways than most people realize. Playing the six-degrees-of-
separtaion game...

UNIX -> multiple UNIXs (BSD, SUN-OS, Xenix, System III, HP/UX, Ultrix,
AIX, Tru64) -> which led to:
a) QNX (soon to be inside BlackBerry)
b) Mach (which led to MAC OS X)
c) Linux -> which led to:
d) Android (already in many handset alliance phones)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.svg

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/