Two towering figures in computing died this month, besides Steve Jobs. A good case can be made that their contributions are as great as his, if not greater. The first was Dennis Ritchie who died at the age of 70 on October 13th. Ritchie invented the C programming language and the Unix operating system, two of the technologies that are key to the distributed computing today that makes the Internet possible. The other is John McCarthy who died yesterday at the age of 84. Like McCarthy, Ritchie was a major innovator in both languages and operating systems. He was the father of time-sharing, the key component of mainframe operating systems that allowed multiple users to access the computer as if they were the exclusive owner. McCarthy went on to become a pioneer of artificial intelligence and created a language called LISP that is widely used in this arena.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/reflections-on-the-passing-of-john-mccarthy-and-dennis-ritchie/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
