Dragon's Lair Fans - Arcade Lifestyle

General Chat => All the rest => Topic started by: lutorkhan on October 14, 2011, 01:08:07 PM

Title: Goodbye Dennis!
Post by: lutorkhan on October 14, 2011, 01:08:07 PM

Dennis Ritchie (31 b.C. - 39 a.C.)

Unfortunately Ritchie is (was) a famous unknown, no titles on newspapers, no breaking news about his death.
He didn't create anything funny, glam or posh
he wasn't considered the guru of everything neither the smartest guy in the room
he just gave us a letter: never a single letter did so much in I.T.

Title: Re: Goodbye Dennis!
Post by: level42 on October 14, 2011, 02:50:31 PM

Although the name triggered something in my memory i had to use Google to understand who you ment.

It's funny because if your had mentioned "Kernighan & Ritchie"I would have know who it was right away.

Clearly remember studying their Book about C when I was a work-student. I knew Basic in and out and thought I was pretty smart.....had to re-think that when I started wit C. :)

Wrote one program in C in my life, a program to split large files over several floppies. The company built computers for the climate control in large greenhouses.The company used BASIS computers  http://www.zock.com/8-Bit/D_Basis108.HTML which were German Apple ][ clones, in a standard PC like case with loose keyboard and space for Hard and floppy drives.

I had to study the Apple Floppy format for it and learned a lot...and to my utter surprise it actually worked after some fiddling around....

Never touched C after that.Its certainly a great language and one of the few that still survived in a way.

RIP, another pioneer in computers gone...

Title: Re: Goodbye Dennis!
Post by: Etienne MacGyver on October 14, 2011, 04:55:30 PM

I only know Quake C (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuakeC)  :D
Although i dont remember much of it..

Title: Re: Goodbye Dennis!
Post by: level42 on October 14, 2011, 04:56:54 PM

I bet there are few people in the world who have never used a program that was written in C or one of it's successors....

Title: Re: Goodbye Dennis!
Post by: SeTTleR on October 18, 2011, 02:15:42 PM

Hi,
I think everyone who ever used a Computer used programs written in C. Operating System Kernels, Drivers, etc. I bet even some of our beloved Video Games have been written in C.
It's hard to write programs in C (it's two weeks ago since I  experienced this again), but you are free to do everything with your machine. That's the point why it is so successfull.
The world lost a great man with Mr. Ritchie and I am worried that he gained so less attention in the media.