A Few Good Fella - Dennis Ritchie!

It is difficult to think a day when I am not using a computer and specially not writing a source code. When writing any program it is a challenge to do it totally different, with a simple logic and shorter than others code. I am doing it last twenty-six years. Some software that I was using then are lost its way like COBOL, PASCAL, FORTRAN but there is one still surviving, going stronger by days and used all over the world. I am talking about 'C'.

After Steve Jobs, Computer world lost Dennis Ritchie the father of 'C' on 12 October. My page is dedicated to the genius who lived and died quietly but his legacy will go on.

Dennis Ritchie

Ritchie was born in Bronxville, New York. His father was Alistair E. Ritchie, a longtime Bell Labs scientist and co-author of The Design of Switching Circuits on switching circuit theory. Ritchie graduated from Harvard University with degrees in physics and applied mathematics. In 1967, he began working at the Bell Labs Computing Sciences Research Center, and in 1968, he received a PhD from Harvard under the supervision of Patrick C. Fischer. Ritchie was best known as the creator of the C programming language, a key developer of the UNIX operating system, and co-author of The C Programming Language, commonly referred  to as K&R (in reference to the authors Kernighan and Ritchie). Ritchie worked together with  Ken Thompson, the scientist credited with writing the original Unix; one of Ritchie's most  important contributions to Unix was its porting to different machines and platforms.

The C language is widely used today in application, operating system, and embedded system development, and its influence is seen in most modern programming languages. UNIX has also been influential, establishing concepts and principles that are now precepts of  computing.  Ritchie was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988 for "development of the "C" programming language and for co-development of the UNIX operating system."

C & UNIX

To help make UNIX portable, Ritchie created a new programming language, called C, in 1972. C used features of low-level languages or machine languages and features of high-level languages. However, because C combined functions of both high- and low-level languages and was very flexible, it was not for beginners. C was very portable because, while it used a relatively small syntax and instruction set, it was also highly structured and modular. Therefore, it was easy to adapt it to different computers, and programmers could copy preexisting blocks of C functions into their programs. These blocks, which were stored on disks in various libraries and could be accessed by using C programs, allowed programmers to create their own programs without having to reinvent the wheel. Because C had features of low-level programming languages, it ran very quickly and efficiently compared to other high-level languages, and it took up relatively little computer time. C was also popular because it was written for UNIX, which, by the early 1990s, was shipped out on over $20 billion of new computer systems a year, making it one of the most commonly used operating systems in the world. Apart from C and  UNIX he also worked on  ALTRAN, B, BCPL, Multics

Dennis Ritchie was found dead on October 12, 2011 at the age of 70 at his home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey where he lived alone. First news of his death came from his former colleague, Rob Pike. The cause and exact time of death have not been disclosed. He had been in frail health for several years following treatment for prostate cancer and heart disease. His death came a week after the death of Steve Jobs; although Ritchie's death did not receive as much media coverage.

Computer historians such as Paul Ceruzzi said his influence was comparable and I agree with him. I cannot think a computer world without 'C' and 'UNIX'. He will live with us in our program and every moment Unix.

Some Quotation :

"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity."

"C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success."

!!!    #include <stdio.h>

       #include <conio.h>

           void main()

              {

                  int i;

                  clrscr();

                  for(i=0;i<=infinity;i++)

                      {

                         printf(“\n\nRIP Dennis Ritchie, we will miss you”);

                      }

                  getch();

              }  !!!