In the post Dennis Ritchie Day, Tim O’Reilly "declares this Sunday, October 30 to be Dennis Ritchie Day!" O'Reilly acknowledges that "I don't have the convening power of a Governor Brown" (who declared Sunday, October 16, as Steve Jobs Day), but calls for Dennis Ritchie Day to be observed by "those of us around the world who care." O'Reilly uses this post to enumerate many of the advances that Ritchie has had a hand in throughout the development of modern day processor-based systems. Related posts on this subject include Denver Post's Quillen: Computer superstar's death overlooked, The most important man in tech died last week…It wasn’t Steve Jobs., and Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On.
In Honor of Dennis Ritchie Day is a page for today only (offer expires on Halloween, 31 October 2011), O'Reilly is offering: "Save 50% on C/C++, Linux, and Unix Ebooks & Videos." The page also reminds us that "Ebooks from oreilly.com are DRM-free. You get free lifetime access, multiple file formats, free updates." I'm thinking about getting Unix Power Tools, Third Edition.
Not everyone is happy about books being sold by O'Reilly in honor of Dennis Ritchie Day. However, one poster points out, "If this prompts more people to discover Ritchie's work then I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing."
October 2011 has been a bad month for losing pioneers in our industry. Besides the loss of Steve Jobs (October 5) and Dennis Ritchie (October 12), we also lost John McCarthy in October (October 23). calibraxis suggests we can honor McCarthy by purchasing books on LISP-inspired technologies such as Clojure and Erlang. John Fitzpatrick also points out that we also lost Daniel McCracken this year (July 30) as well.
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