Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 - October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist recognized as a foundational figure in the history of modern computing. He created the C programming language, one of the most influential and widely used languages for software and operating system development. Alongside Ken Thompson, he developed the UNIX operating system at Bell Labs, which laid the groundwork for many modern systems, including Linux and macOS. His contributions defined much of the architecture of contemporary software, and his legacy remains central to software engineering and global computing.

Quotes

• The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
• [C has] the power of assembly language and the convenience of … assembly language.
• C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.
• UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity.
• What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication.