Dennis Ritchie

The Internet appears to be on fire with news that Dennis Ritchie has died. Folks, that was 5 years ago. How can you not know this? Ritchie was one our leading lights and his legacy is everywhere within our industry and even our world.

The “news” appears to have been set off when Wired reran a story of his death from 2011. I don’t know if it was meant as a memorial or was just a mistake. Regardless, that’s no excuse for all these people posting about his death as if it just happened. I really don’t understand how some practitioners in our field can be so unaware that one of our leading icons died 5 years ago. Maybe they need to get out into the big blue room a little more.

UPDATE [2016-10-13 Thu 19:01]: C|Net has an article on this. It’s astounding that serious tech figures like Om Malik, Sundar Pichai, and Craig Newmark didn’t know that Ritchie has been dead for 5 years.

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