Ritchey Denis

Denis McAlister Ritchey

Denis Ritchey and Ken Thompson create the first version UNIX on PDP-7

Denis McAlister Ritchey  is an outstanding programmer. It is known as the creator of powerful programming language Si, one of the leading developers of the popular UNIX operating system and also as the coauthor of one of the most qualitative and detailed books about language C "Programming language C" often called briefly by the K/R or K&R standard that corresponds to initials of authors  — Kernighan and Ritchey.

Was born on September 9, 1941 in New York, the USA.

Education, career

The termination of Harvard University where he received the bachelor's degree on physics and applied mathematics became the first significant event on the way of determination of the place to lives for it. During training at Ritchey's university understood that has no enough capabilities for studying of physics and that information technologies are much closer to it. In 1967, following the example of the father who had there, long career, Ritchey goes to work in Bell Labs. Participation (the help in creation of the compiler of the BCPL language) in development of Multics, the operating system implementing the principles of time sharing of execution of programs revolutionary at that time becomes one of its first serious projects.

Multics was joint development of three large organizations  — Bell Labs, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and General Electric. In 1969 Bell Labs refuses participation in work on Multics and leaves the project, motivating the actions with lack of financial profit on it. The set of the concepts offered by specialists of this company remained is not implemented or not finished. Soon, after completion of works on Multics, Bell Labs begins own project  — the UNIX operating system. Denis Ritchey becomes one of the leading developers. In UNIX a large amount of the ideas which did not find applications in Multics was implemented. The first official release the version of UNIX which appeared in the 1971st year for PDP-11 computers is considered.

Along with the beginning of works on UNIX-SYSTEMS as Ken Thompson and Denis Ritchey programming language B which is the simplified option of the BCPL language on which compiler Denis Ritchey worked in the Multics project was developed. During the period with 1969th on the 1973rd years language B intensively extended and improved. Denis Ritchey added to him new, expanded syntax and support of data types. As a result of such completions by 1973-ohm year the modern language of programming, well-known to almost all programmers as language C was actually created. The third official version of UNIX in the 1973rd year appeared already with the built-in compiler Si. In the fourth version in the 1974th year on C the core of UNIX was rewritten, and the fifth version was already completely written on C. Thus the concept of creation of operating systems only in the Assembler language was destroyed. After UNIX well proved in Bell Labs, was set and successfully worked in several educational, state and commercial organizations, Steve Johnson, Ken Thompson and Denis Ritchey performed transfer of a system on the new platform of the machines Interdata 8/32. This event confirmed expressions of developers about a possibility of functioning of UNIX on different platforms and laid the foundation for its wide circulation.

Now Denis Ritchey still works in Bell Labs, heading a small development team and researches in the field of distributed operating systems and the hardware accompanying them. The last serious achievements of this group were: development and a release of the first version of Plan9 operating system in the 1995th year and the Inferno operating system for the first time announced in April of the 1996th.

For joint development of the general theory of operating systems and creation of universal Unix OS Ritchey and Ken Thompson got Turing's Award. On April 27, 1999 Ritchey and Ken Thompson together got a national medal for achievements in the field of technologies of 1998 from the president Bill Clinton for the invention of the Unix operating system and the Si programming language

End of a course of life

Dennis Ritchie died on October 9, 2011.

The engineer of Google and the former colleague Ritchey, Rob Pike, wrote in the blog that Ritchey who was one of founders and developers of the Unix operating system known as dmr, after a long illness died at home during week-end, at the age of 70 years.

Quotes

• That who sends me letters with the description of the languages which are thought up by them I would advise not to be afraid to experiment  — it will give the experience necessary for writing of the compiler. However while you do not manage to get support of any interested and influential organization, do not wait that somebody will use your creation. There is great variety of programming languages which do not concede or even exceed Si on beauty and convenience. Nevertheless nobody uses them.