Dennis Ritchie

Steve Jobs’ passing was rightly lamented in the world’s media, but I wonder how many people will note the passing of Dennis Ritchie? Far fewer, I’ll bet, but arguably he was many, many times more important to IT innovation than the Apple founder.

Ritchie’s software creations and their direct descendants run pretty much everything we use online today, including Jobs’ own devices like the iPhone.

When you visit a website and your PC asks you to run Java…that’s based on Dennis Ritchie’s C programming language, a shorthand of words, numbers and punctuation. Successors like C++ also build on the ideas, rules and grammar that Mr. Ritchie designed.

He also came up with the Unix operating system which has similarly had a rich and enduring impact. Unix and its free, open-source variant, Linux, underpins nearly everything online. It powers many of the world’s data centres, like those at Google and Amazon, so much so that 70% of all web servers use it.  Its technology also serves as the foundation of operating systems like Apple’s Mac OS, iOS on your iPhone, Android on your smartphone, the base system in your wifi router at home …

So, you may not realise it but Dennis Ritchie’s inventions touch your life every single day and although he may not be as well-known as Mr Jobs, his IT legacy will live on for many generations to come.

Requiscat in Pace, dmr.