Re: [XForms] Dennis Ritchie is dead

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 10/13/2011 06:32 PM, Jens Thoms Toerring wrote:
> Hi,
>
>    this is a bit off-topic for this mailing list but
> since XForms has it's root deeply both in Unix and C
> please bear with me:
>
> Dennis M. Ritchie, together with Ken Thompson one of
> the "fathers" of Unix, the creator of C and co-author
> (with Brian Kernighan) of probably one of the best
> programming books ever, "The C Programming Language",
> has died.
>
> I think not only we as Unix and C programmers owe him
> a real lot. There are very few people whose work, in a
> positive sense, that much influenced my life - and rather
> likely that of thousands and thousands of others - as his.
> Learning and using C and Unix has been and still is an
> immense source of fun to me.
>
> My thoughts are with his family and friends.
>
>                       Best regards, Jens
Yes, if there ever was a giant upon whose shoulders we all stand, Dennis 
Ritchie was surely one of them.

I haven't seen Dennis in over 20 years, but on the few occasions that I 
met him, and had a couple of beers with him,
  he seemed like a genuinely-nice person, and the most unassuming 
"giant" one could ever possibly meet. The entire
  IT/Software/Technology industry owes him a debt of gratitude so 
insanely large, and yet 99.9% don't even know who
  he is.

The news of his death has affected me personally today.  Not only 
because I've actually met the man, but because I learned
  C and Unix "back in the beginning" (1979).  My life has been utterly 
shaped by having lucked into a job in 1979 where I got
  to learn C from "The C Tutorial", and program on Unix systems.

Goodnight, curly-braces man.  You'll be missed.



--
Marcus Leech
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org