The Unsung Hero
The real
heroes always work behind the scenes,in the past week the crafters of the
modern digital era have passed away.But what strikes me the most about their
deaths is how it evoked different
reactions from the media and the people in general.On one hand we have Steve
job’s larger than life image and apple’s ‘i’ touch and on the other we have
Dennis Ritchie, a far greater genius the creator of C programming language and the co creator of Unix.Today,while
reading an article in Economics Times of India titled “The
other man behind your ipad”,took me on the plane of philosophy and
reflection about who the world cares about more and who has impacted the world
in a greater way.Well lets go back to the roots ,a journey down the memory
lane. It is a story of a man who had “embedded” himself in all our digital systems and left an
indelible impact on the world of programming.So let us ‘C’ his-story,Dennis
Macalastair Ritchie(DMR) as he was popularly known ,was a researcher at the
Bell labs, while working at the Artificial Intelligence lab at MIT,he was given
a project to create an OS for the MIT computer labs,hence he deftly used his
ingenuity to conjure the Unics ,an improved version and slightly different form
of which he would develop independently two years later along with his long
time associate Ken Thompson. It literally had the ‘X’ factor in it the Uni’x’
operating system was like a gift of quail and manna to the computer scientist’s
community.It had filled the long awaited void in the operating system market
and soon with the development of the world wide web it became instrumental in
crafting the future of the internet.
But DMR’s
most dexterous brainchild was yet to be established something, which is and has
been potent enough to alchemize every aspect of the software arena with its Midas
touch.The year was 1969,everywhere in the world there was a social awakening
the Beatles
had hit the billboards,The Summer of Love had just ended
giving a radical preamble to the proximity and difference between the sexes.It
was in the midst of such maelstrom of changes that the C programming language
was developed single handedly by Ritchie.It was developed from the existing “B”
programming language at the time.But had faculties far greater than the
existing languages like B,FORTRAN,PASCAL and ALGOL.
This had
ushered in the new era of software development and opened the floodgates for
the growth of the software companies,and brought in the IT revolution of the
modern era. From submarines to washing machines and dishwashers C program codes
were embedded in almost all digital system.This was because of the portability
and robustness of the language.This was a free software so anybody could
download it from the internet and further develop on it like the open
source softwares which were to follow in a few decades later.Same was the case
with the Unix OS.
Now it so
happens that Berkeley University in California,had developed it own version of
the Unix and marketed it under the brandname of BSD(Berkeley Software
Distribution).It was on this BSD that the Mac OS was developed and if you look
at the OS of your present ipad it reads BSD 4.2.Hence it all traces back to the
humble origins of the Unix .And as for the C it was standardized by the American
National Standard Institute(ANSI-C).All the modern programming languages
were developed from C.Hence,a popular saying among tech historians is B gave
birth to C , C to C++ ,C++ to Java which now rules over the internet.
A recipient
of Turing
award from the ACM and the Hamming Medal from IEEE,Ritchie
has also co-authored the book The C programming language popularly known as K&R.He also received the National
Medal for Technology in 1999 from president Clinton.He spent his last years in
Berkeley hills, CA, led a sequestered life and survived prostrate cancer.But in
the end succumbed to the infirmities and frailties of old age.
But here’s
the burning question the thing that bugs me the most, why did the man who
changed the world radically received so less media coverage as compared to the
man who sold only tablets and phones.It was perhaps fate or maybe choice that one
decided to remain out of the public glare because Real heroes know true
happiness doesnot lie in the glare of the television cameras or the applause of
the crowd,but doing in something which
satiates you,gives you a blissful realization that at the end of the day you
can go to bed knowing that you did something really wonderful which affected
millions of lives and changed the course of the future.Throughout the annals of time there have such people who
remained ambiguously obscure but worked their way through to the zenith.Today while
reading The K&R book and contemplating about the things which matter and
which don’t , things which are there for the long haul and things which are swept away by the sands of time.I feel humbled
to inherit that royal lineage and regal vision of the C-man,and consider myself
fortunate to live in a time of such great men .In fact it is the
zeitgeist which imbibes me with hope and faith that the future belongs to those
who endear disregarding popular public opinion . Its difficult to swim against
the tide but once we do that we reach
the place which destiny has in store for us.
