---
id: 411
title: Where would we be without Dennis Ritchie?
date: 2011-10-16T16:05:06+00:00
author: Admin
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  - http://simplystatistics.tumblr.com/post/11527345087/where-would-we-be-without-dennis-ritchie
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slug: "where-would-we-be-without-dennis-ritchie"
---
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Most have probably seen this already since it happend a few days ago, but <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/technology/dennis-ritchie-programming-trailblazer-dies-at-70.html">Dennis Ritchie died</a>. It just blows my mind how influential his work was — developing the C language, Unix — and how so many pieces of technology bear his fingerprints. 

My first encounter with K&R was in college when I learned C programming in the “Data Structures and Programming Techniques” class at Yale (taught by <a href="http://www.cs.yale.edu/people/eisenstat.html" target="_blank">Stan &#8220;the man&#8221; Eisenstadt</a>). Looking back, his book seems fairly easy to read and understand, but I must have cursed that book a million times when I took that course!
