“Pioneering computer scientist Dennis Ritchie has died after a long illness,” BBC News reports.
“Mr Ritchie was one of the creators of the hugely influential Unix operating system and the equally pioneering C programming language,” The Beeb reports. “A vast number of modern technologies depend on the work he and fellow programmers did on Unix and C in the early days of the computer revolution.”
“Those paying respects said he was a ‘titan’ of the industry whose influence was largely unknown,” The Beeb reports. “Along with Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna, Mr Ritchie was one of the key creators of the Unix operating system at Bell Labs during the 1960s and 70s.”
The Beeb reports, “Unix’s influence has been felt in many ways. It established many software engineering principles that persist until today; it was the OS of choice for the internet; it kicked off the open source movement and has been translated to run on many different types of hardware.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Of course, Apple’s Mac OS X is the world’s most widely used Unix-based system in the desktop computer market (58 million users) and Apple’s iOS, derived from Mac OS X, is the world’s most widely used Unix-based system in the mobile/tablet market. R.I.P., Mr Ritchie.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David Haun” for the heads up.]