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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 10/22/2011 10:46 AM, John Wallace wrote:
> On Oct 17, 12:52 pm, Neil Rieck<n.ri... at sympatico.ca>  wrote:
>> On Oct 16, 4:32 pm, John Wallace<johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk>  wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Oct 14, 2:43 am, "Forster, Michael"<mfors... at mcw.edu>  wrote:
>>
>>>> A story from AP:
>>
>>>> DennisRitchie, computer-programming pioneer, dies<http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16036/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=CNLtbdwb>
>>
>>> Turning the pages of the hardcopy (Manchester) Guardian earlier today,
>>> I was very pleasantly surprised (well, as pleasant as you can be in
>>> the circumstances) to see that dmr was the lead obit, the whole
>>> section to himself, and got a really quite good writeup.
>>
>>> It's athttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/13/dennis-ritchie
>>
>>> In looking for what else the writer (Martin Campbell-Kelly, not a name
>>> I recognise) had done for the Grauniad, he's done quite a few obits,
>>> also recently including one for Daniel (D) McCracken. That's another
>>> author whose books will be familiar to many of a certain age. I'd not
>>> seen it reported elsewhere.
>>
>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/29/daniel-mccracken-obi...
>>
>>> I assume the Martin Campbell-Kelly in this picture is the one who is
>>> Professor of Computer Science at Warwick University:http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/martin_campbell-kelly/
>>
>>> Thank you, Professor Campbell-Kelly, for making bad news marginally
>>> more bearable.
>>
>> Thank god for the Guardian (as well as "BBC Television on PBS" and
>> "BBC World Service on Sirius"). Most news outlets in Canada and the US
>> seem to preferentially carry Hollywood super-star minutia and it seems
>> to me that their coverage of Steve Jobs was more of the super-star
>> stuff. And while I'm on my soap box, why do newspapers still carry a
>> daily astrology blurb instead of a daily astronomy blurb?

How about because more than forty percent of the population has 
subnormal intelligence?

>>
>> NSR
>
> There was coverage of Dennis Ritchie in this week's BBC Radio 4
> obituary programme, "Last Word" (as mentioned earlier). I only caught
> the tail end (wasted too much time faffing about with a new-to-me
> alleged DAB receiver). Tim Berners-Lee was one of (I presume) several
> folks speaking. You can find the obit online via BBC Listen Again at
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00l9xhw
> and I will do so in due course.
>
> Whether or not you like the language, the book was a classic.
> Stroustrup's book, on the other hand...