[PLUG-TALK] Dennis Ritchie vs. Steve Jobs

[MJang]

On Mon, 2011-10-24 at 08:18 -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
> A letter in the current issue of The Economist
> <http://www.economist.com/node/21533350>:
> 
> "The death of a tech genius
> 
> "SIR – There has been a lot of talk about the untimely death of Steve Jobs,
> the man who turned Apple around by designing products that became very
> popular (“A genius departs”, October 8th). The death of any person at the
> age of 56 is reason to lament, but Mr Jobs was just a businessman who knew
> his stuff and became very rich in the process.
> 
> "Have you heard of Dennis Ritchie? He died a week after Mr Jobs, but was
> much more influential and significant. A salaried employee at Bell
> Laboratories throughout his working life, Mr Ritchie invented the C
> programming language and helped to create the Unix operating system.


Excellent letter, and the appropriate way to put Steve Jobs' life in
perspective. Nevertheless, as much as I celebrate Ritchie's life, I
think without Jobs, we as geeks would still be "uncool," and have to
effectively live on the periphery of society.

Thanks,
Mike