Dennis Ritchie, supremely literate codeveloper of the C programming language and its accompanying little book, “The C Programming” language, died as a titan in the programming world and as a footnote–if that–elsewhere. (My favorite tribute to him: This first-rate sonnet by Edmund Jorgenson. It’s as good as you’ll find in any poetry journal.)
Ritchie was titanically gifted. He had a deep understanding of how computers work and utterly changed the way generations of programmers worked. Before he and Brian Kernighan invented C, each computer had a completely different programming language. It was sort of like having to learn English to work in New Hampshire, French to work in Vermont, and Spanish to work in California.
C was designed to so that one could isolate most of the computer-specific parts into a subset of the program. It was also aesthetically pleasing, irresistibly so to forward-thinking programmers.
C was such a powerful influence that programmers demanded it even when manufacturers and companies like Microsoft (sorry, my cherished alma mater) actively fought against its use. While its use is waning in most programming jobs it is still very much alive, running in the operating system of virtually every desktop or laptop computer on Earth, and on billions of other devices that have computers embedded in them. Dennis Ritchie’s influence on humanity was infinitely greater than that of, say, Princess Diana, and maybe even of Michael Jackson.
In my opinion he should have been a Nobel or Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. This is a hard thing to explain to people who aren’t programmers, so I never expected anything like that to happen. Understandably, most mentions of his name outside of Reddit or Hacker News were polite but muted. Because his accomplishments were of such a technical nature one doesn’t expect him to be on the Medal of Freedom shortlist.
I am haunted now, wondering who the Dennis Ritchies of the rest of the world are. Maybe Paul Erdos in math? Surely one of them is Malcom McLean, who invented the shipping container. Another one would have to be Norman Borlaug, directly responsible for saving the lives of billions of people through improved farming techniques. Who are the living ones? Who’s the Dennis Ritchie of hip-hop, or country music, or materials science, or construction, or art? There’s so much I don’t know….