Dennis Ritchie Who?

On October 5th Steve Jobs passed away in his home from pancreatic cancer ending an era of his leadership that has effectively defined the "designer" technology market over the last two decades. The media response to his passing was unprecedented, with enormous coverage in the traditional media and an outpouring from fans through social media. On Twitter, Jobs fans sent out their sympathies using the hash tags #iSad and #ThankYouSteve flooding the internet with millions of messages and forming a truly impressive memorial to the man and his life's work.

In the wake of Jobs passing, another man died the week after, his name was Dennis Ritchie. In contrast most people have never heard of him, and probably had no idea that he was gone – I certainly didn't. The thing is though, that Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language which went on to become the foundation of modern languages like C++ and Java.

Dennis also co-authored the UNIX operating system, which would spawn Linux, the operating system that runs roughly 60% of web servers supplying content to the internet in comparison to Microsoft's smaller 40% stake. In fact, 90% of all supercomputers run some variant of Linux and as do all of the ten fastest supercomputers in the world.

It may not be as apparent in our everyday lives as the branding and inherent sense of style that we have come to expect from Apple under the direction of Steve Jobs, but these inventions paved the way for all of the advances that came later. In fact, if you were to open any computer in the world whether PC or Mac, you would find technologies building or benefitting from Ritchie's work. Without him we wouldn't have the internet which primarily runs on UNIX based systems, and software like Photoshop, Adobe and web browsers, which are all written in C or a derivative. Even the ipod menu system is written in C++.

Ritchie's shoulders were the ones that Apple would stand on to create a perfectly smooth and enjoyable user experience. Jobs would master the art of creating technology that is controlled and responds "as the user expects it should rather than requiring the user to learn how to use the technology", but we shouldn't forget the man who made all that possible, working far from Apples media limelight.

So there you go Dennis, it's not like the internet lit up like it did for Steve Jobs, but you did make it into my blog.

Ryan Innes

I.T. Consultant

Ryan comes from a strong background in customer service and has recently joined the Myrtec team as an IT consultant.

Ryan grew up in Scotland and moved to Australia in 2001 in search of higher opportunities. Ryan holds a Bachelor degree in Information Technology (Applications Major), and a Diploma in Network Engineering. He is currently working towards the MCITP: Enterprise Administrator on Windows Server 2008 qualification.

Contact Ryan directly by emailing ryan.innes@myrtec.com.au