It’s a sad month: RIP Dennis Ritchie

It’s impossible for me to imagine a world without C or Unix, they have been the foundations of most things that I’m using all the time, every day. Dennis Ritchie, together with Kenneth Thompson, created both. On October 8th, Dennis Ritchie passes away at the age of 71.

The story of how these two people both created a programming language and operating system clearly illustrates how sheer passion and enthusiasm easily trumps a massive development team. During my own career as a software developer I’ve tried to follow the same approach as much as possible. Sometimes I’m still amazed at the results that can be achieved alone or with a very small team.

Thanks for everything you’ve created, Dennis Ritchie, without the foundations you laid out, it would be a very different computer age.