Despite the commotion about Jobs’s death, many probably don’t know about the death of Dennis Ritchie (even that being in second on Twitter Worldwide Trend Topics while I was writing this post). Yeah, who the hell is Dennis Ritchie? I had no idea either, but his legacy is much bigger than Jobs’s.
What?! Wait a minute! How so someone I’ve never heard about is more important than Steve Jobs? That is the difference to real geniuses: their legacy is even greater than their fame. Dennis Ritchie was the designer and developer of C language, not that would be enough mind-blowing he also co-created Unix.
It’s like Newton’s famous quote: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. I am not going to talk how internet, iOS and basically everything on IT relays in C, Unix or their legacy. But despite everything that other created, designed and built for Jobs to sell, Ritchie made things himself.
It is so sad people who worked in the greatest revolution of mankind are passing away. What are we going to do with all the transformation and power they gave us?
I am going to finish this drop with much more philosofical statement than the usual “That is all for now. Until next post, with more drops of logs from a Computer Scientist’s life”:
Fame is not important. Let’s be ready to change the world and stay anonymous.
