'C'ing through

                        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.