RIP Dennis. Now that's a guy worth mourning about.
I'll check CNN and the BBC to see their special reports, surely if they had them when some marketing CEO kicked the bucket they'll give at least ten times the amount of coverage to a man who was 100 times his better!
Please stop, this isn't a contest, and I for one don't want to see HN kicked in the junk again over it. dmr wasn't a household name simply because most people lack the background to see the clarity and suitability of his work.
As much as I cringe at seeing "undefined behavior" robustness compromises today, when he started they were absolutely necessary, and he got our profession through one of its most difficult periods. We few know what we owe him.
In the realm of news, almost no one knows who Dennis Ritchie was. You can lament that fact (obviously, to anyone even remotely related to computing he was a figure of paramount importance), but it's ridiculous to expect the mainstream press to understand that importance.
Analogies are tenuous, but when Michael Jackson died, it was obviously big news. It was all over television. Nobody reported when Ross Snyder‡ died, even though his influence was of great importance. That's the way these things work.
‡If anyone didn't know, Ross invented the multitrack recorder, one of the most transformative tools in music production.
No one is better than anyone else really. dmr's work has likely touched more lives than most, but like many researchers and programmers, his work is mostly "behind the scenes" and not flashy or glamorous and he probably wanted it that way.
We on HN realize the significance of his work, but most other people won't and that's OK as we all benefit from the things he did whether we realize it or not.
[..] The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth." - Steve Jobs
I'll check CNN and the BBC to see their special reports, surely if they had them when some marketing CEO kicked the bucket they'll give at least ten times the amount of coverage to a man who was 100 times his better!