Editing Dennis Ritchie (section)

==Legacy==
Following Ritchie's death, computer historian [[Paul E. Ceruzzi]] stated:<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Langer |first1=Emily |date=October 14, 2011 |title=Dennis Ritchie, founder of Unix and C, dies at 70 |newspaper=Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dennis-ritchie-founder-of-unix-and-c-dies-at-70/2011/10/13/gIQAXsVXiL_story.html |access-date=November 3, 2011}}</ref>

{{blockquote|Ritchie was under the radar. His name was not a household name at all, but... if you had a microscope and could look in a computer, you'd see his work everywhere inside.}}

In an interview shortly after Ritchie's death, long-time colleague [[Brian Kernighan]] said Ritchie never expected C to be so significant.<ref name="ForbesKernighanInterview2011-11-04">{{Cite magazine |last1=Prasad |first1=Shishir |date=November 4, 2011 |title=No one thought 'C' would become so big: Brian Kernighan |url=http://forbesindia.com/interview/special/brian-kernighan-no-one-thought-c-would-become-so-big/29982/1 |magazine=[[Forbes India]] |access-date=November 28, 2011 |quote=Q Did Dennis Ritchie or you ever think C would become so popular? [Kernighan] I don't think that at the time Dennis worked on Unix and C anyone thought these would become as big as they did. Unix, at that time, was a research project inside Bell Labs.}}</ref>
Kernighan told ''[[The New York Times]]'' "The tools that Dennis built—and their direct descendants—run pretty much everything today."<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Lohroct |first1=Steve |date=October 13, 2011 |title=Dennis Ritchie, 70, Dies, Programming Trailblazer |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/technology/dennis-ritchie-programming-trailblazer-dies-at-70.html |access-date=November 14, 2016}}</ref> Kernighan reminded readers of how important a role C and Unix had played in the development of later high-profile projects, such as the [[iPhone]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=November 28, 2011 |title=Myths of Steve Jobs |work=[[Deccan Herald]] |url=http://www.deccanherald.com/blog/?p=220 |url-status=dead |access-date=November 28, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130727010843/http://www.deccanherald.com/blog/?p=220 |archive-date=July 27, 2013 |quote=Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of the C language and co-inventor of the Unix operating system, died a few days after Steve Jobs. He was far more influential than Jobs.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Datta |first1=Subhajit |date=November 14, 2011 |title=The tale of three deeply different technologists |work=[[The Hindu]] |url=http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/karnataka/article2622056.ece |url-status=dead |access-date=November 28, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111116000934/http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/karnataka/article2622056.ece |archive-date=November 16, 2011}}</ref> Other testimonials to his influence followed.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Cardinal |first1=David |date=November 2, 2011 |title=Dennis Ritchie, creator of C, bids "goodbye, world" |publisher=[[Extreme Tech]] |url=http://www.extremetech.com/computing/102835-dennis-ritchie-creator-of-c-bids-goodbye-world |access-date=November 28, 2011 |quote=The book came off the shelf in service of teaching another generation a simple, elegant way to program that allows the developer to be directly in touch with the innards of the computer. The lowly integer variable—int—has grown in size over the years as computers have grown, but the C language and its sparse, clean, coding style live on. For that we all owe a lot to Dennis Ritchie.}}</ref><ref name="TheEconomist">{{Cite news |date=November 5, 2011 |title=Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy: Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy, machine whisperers, died on October 8th and 24th respectively, aged 70 and 84 |newspaper=The Economist |url=http://www.economist.com/node/21536536 |access-date=November 28, 2011 |quote=Now that digital devices are fashion items, it is easy to forget what really accounts for their near-magical properties. Without the operating systems which tell their different physical bits what to do, and without the languages in which these commands are couched, the latest iSomething would be a pretty but empty receptacle. The gizmos of the digital age owe a part of their numeric souls to Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=November 23, 2011 |title=The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix |publisher=Newswise |url=http://www.newswise.com/articles/the-strange-birth-and-long-life-of-unix |access-date=November 28, 2011 |quote=Four decades ago, Ken Thompson, the late Dennis Ritchie, and others at AT&T's Bell Laboratories developed Unix, which turned out to be one of the most influential pieces of software ever written. Their work on this operating system had to be done on the sly, though, because their employer had recently backed away from operating-systems research.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Das |first1=Shyamanuja |date=November 1, 2011 |title=The forgotten tech luminaries: The new generation of the digital age owe a part of their numeric souls to Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy |work=Ciol.com |url=http://www.ciol.com/News/News/News-Reports/The-forgotten-tech-luminaries/156641/0/ |url-status=dead |access-date=November 28, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160703005812/http://www.ciol.com/News/News/News-Reports/The-forgotten-tech-luminaries/156641/0/ |archive-date=July 3, 2016 |quote=UNIX, to the development of which Ritchie greatly contributed, and whose C made it possible it to be ported to other machines, is, even today, in its different avatars, the de facto OS for anything that is mission critical. [[Oracle Solaris|Solaris]], [[IBM AIX|AIX]], [[HP-UX]], Linux—all these are derived from UNIX.}}</ref>

Reflecting upon his death, a commentator compared the relative importance of [[Steve Jobs]] and Ritchie, concluding that "[Ritchie's] work played a key role in spawning the technological revolution of the last forty years—including technology on which Apple went on to build its fortune."<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Duncan |first1=Geoff |date=October 13, 2011 |title=Was Dennis Ritchie more important than Steve Jobs? |url=http://www.digitaltrends.com/apple/was-dennis-ritchie-more-important-than-steve-jobs/ |publisher=Digital Trends |access-date=November 14, 2016}}</ref> Another commentator said, "Ritchie, on the other hand, invented and co-invented two key software technologies which make up the DNA of effectively every single computer software product we use directly or even indirectly in the modern age. It sounds like a wild claim, but it really is true."<ref>{{Cite news |title=Without Dennis Ritchie, there would be no Steve Jobs |url=https://www.zdnet.com/article/without-dennis-ritchie-there-would-be-no-jobs/ |last1=Perlow |first1=Jason |date=October 9, 2015 |website=ZDNet.com |access-date=November 14, 2016}}</ref> Another said, "many in computer science and related fields knew of Ritchie's importance to the growth and development of, well, everything to do with computing,..."<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Biggs |first1=John |date=October 15, 2011 |title=What Can We Learn From Dennis Ritchie? |url=https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/15/what-can-we-learn-from-dennis-ritchie/ |website=TechCrunch |access-date=November 14, 2016}}</ref>

The [[Fedora 16]] [[Linux distribution]], which was released about a month after he died, was dedicated to his memory.<ref name="F16Phoronix">{{Cite news |last1=Larabel |first1=Michael |date=8 November 2011 |title=Red Hat Releases Fedora 16 "Verne" |url=https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAxMjg |work=[[Phoronix]] |access-date=November 8, 2011}}</ref> [[FreeBSD]] 9.0, released January 12, 2012, was also dedicated in his memory.<ref name="FreeBSD">{{Cite news |last1=Jude |first1=Allan |date=January 12, 2012 |title=FreeBSD-9.0 Announcement |url=http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.0R/announce.html |website=FreeBSD.org |access-date=January 12, 2012}}</ref>

Asteroid [[294727 Dennisritchie]], discovered by astronomers [[Tom Glinos]] and [[David H. Levy]] in 2008, was named in his memory.<ref name="MPC-object"/> The official {{MoMP|294727|naming citation}} was published by the [[Minor Planet Center]] on 7 February 2012 ([[Minor Planet Circulars]] (M.P.C.) 78272).<ref name="MPC-Circulars-Archive"/>