TECH -

Computing pioneer Dennis Ritchie died this past weekend at age 70, becoming the second technology giant to pass within a week — the other, of course, being Apple’s Steve Jobs. Although Jobs was unquestionably the better-known figure, Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language and one of the primary developers of the Unix operating system, both of which have had profound impacts on modern technology. Unix and C lie at the heart of everything from Internet servers to mobile phones, set-top boxes and software. They have exerted tremendous influence on almost all current languages and operating systems. And, these days, computers are everywhere.
The coinciding events lead to an obvious question: Who was more important to modern technology, Ritchie or Jobs? It’s a classic apples-to-oranges question… but the search for an answer sheds a bit of light on what lead to the high-tech revolution and all the cool toys we have today.
Dennis Ritchie, Unix, and C.



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