Requiem for Bell Labs, Unit 1127 (2007)(tuxdeluxe.org)
tuxdeluxe.org
Requiem for Bell Labs, Unit 1127 (2007)
http://www.tuxdeluxe.org/node/113
1 comments
You know what was sad? When Dennis Ritchie died and almost nobody noticed because they were busy mourning Steve Jobs.
The average Joe on the street never directly interacted with nor was directly affected by Dennis Ritchie's work. Since the greater population had never heard of him, they weren't going to be as emotionally affected by his passing. Popular media knew which way the wind was blowing and decided to devote more time and energy to mourning Jobs, because they need their pageviews.
That's not to say the Ritchie wasn't mourned by the people he most closely associated with. My university's CS department held a one minute silence before morning lectures the day after he died. I'm sure other CS people around the world did something similar too. But Ritchie was simply not a global celebrity the way Jobs was, so you can't expect them to be remembered the same way.
That's not to say the Ritchie wasn't mourned by the people he most closely associated with. My university's CS department held a one minute silence before morning lectures the day after he died. I'm sure other CS people around the world did something similar too. But Ritchie was simply not a global celebrity the way Jobs was, so you can't expect them to be remembered the same way.
To be fair, Jobs had considerably more consumer-level celebrity than Ritchie.
You don't have to be a geek to worship your iDevice and its provenance, but having cult reverence for the creator of C and UNIX puts you in a much rarer (and more neckbearded) group. At that time I referenced Ritchie several times to groups (of relatively technical people) I had, and while everyone knew of Jobs, only maybe 20% even recognized Ritchie's name.
You don't have to be a geek to worship your iDevice and its provenance, but having cult reverence for the creator of C and UNIX puts you in a much rarer (and more neckbearded) group. At that time I referenced Ritchie several times to groups (of relatively technical people) I had, and while everyone knew of Jobs, only maybe 20% even recognized Ritchie's name.