As the luminaries of the computer world leave us, we will recognize more and more of those who live on in our machines. Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language. This was work first done with his partner Brian Kernighan from 1969 to 1973. Along with Ken Thompson and a number of others, Dennis also gets credit for creating Unix at Bell Labs during this same period. C and Unix lie at the heart of almost every electronic device you carry today. Whether it’s your iPhone with Apple’s iOS flavor of Unix or your Android phone based on a flavor of Linux. Most software on your computer or phone or pad is written in a derivative of C still today. Ritchie died this past weekend.
I learned to write code for my first Mac with the book he and Kernighan wrote: “The C Programming Language” often called K&R C. I still refer to it when writing iPad apps, the first edition, no less. It is still relevant. The first example code in the book is a charming model that virtually every programming language since has used since, the “hello, world” program. Here is my variation for Dennis today:
main()
{
printf("goodbye, world\n");
}
Thank you, Dennis, for all you gave us.
