Denis Ritchie, who laid the foundation for IT companies

On the warm evening of this Wednesday, 12th of Oct, the man behind the current fortress of IT industry passed away. The response from hardware techies for his demise was immense but it nowhere matched the river of praise and ocean of grief that flew after the announcement of death of iconic Steve Jobs. But it really should, the world may not recognize him as much as Jobs, may be because he was not that popular public face but his contribution were at par even more.

Denis Ritchie was not only the father of C Programming language but with his fellow Bell Labs researcher Ken Thompson, he used C to build UNIX, the operating system which is now the backbone of most of the IT empires including Apple. All popular languages, including Java, are based upon C and all operating systems are developed and designed on C's base. Today the application for mobile platforms - Android and iOS apps are also developed in Objective C, which again is based on C.

The contribution of Richie is definitely much more than any IT company's CEO and COO as he laid the foundation for where IT industries stand now. He is the shoulder where Steve Jobs and other IT giants stand upon.