It is almost 5 years since the pioneer programmer Dennis Ritche passed away. But on 13th Oct. some famous personalities of tech world spread inaccurate information about the death of Dennis Ritche. Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted an older post from wired about Ritchie’s death and paid tribute to him.
I don’t know whether to laugh or to feel shame on this incident. Those who are working in the tech world owe much of their livelihood to this pioneer of the tech world. Dennis Ritche born at New York and was among the early Bell Labs alums, and is credited with both creating the C programming language and co-developing Unix.
But it is a matter of shame to say that for some people he died on 13th October, 2016. Among the first to Tweet about Ritchie’s second death were two people who really ought to have known better: Om Malik and Sundar Pichai, respectively the venture capitalist founder of GigaOm and the CEO of Google.
Dennis Ritchie, Father of C and Co-Developer of Unix, Dies https://t.co/LxkCK6i1DE via @WIRED
— OM (@om) October 13, 2016
Thank you for your immense contributions, RIP Dennis Ritchie https://t.co/LVacgkcXvl
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) October 13, 2016
Their tweets were followed not long after by similarly dashed-off crumbs of digital grief from the founder of Craigslist, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Dennis Ritchie, Father of C and Co-Developer of Unix, Dies https://t.co/jFpZjrtOpy via @WIRED
— craig newmark (@craignewmark) October 13, 2016
"What sets him apart is that he did it… just out of intellectual curiosity." Like all the greatest greats. https://t.co/xTaH9AkOrQ
— Katherine Maher (@krmaher) October 13, 2016
This was the account of mistakes made by humans on twitter. Searching Ritchie’s name, twitter’s top story features a NY Times eulogy with the publish date October 13, 2016, which originally published on the same date in 2011.
But later on venture capitalist founder of GigaOm Mr. Om Malik regretted for the same.
My regrets for sending out a 5 year old story about the passing of Dennis Ritchie last evening without checking! https://t.co/vPSBt1PpuY
— OM (@om) October 13, 2016
This is the age of social media and information spreads in the world like the fire in the jungle. But the need of the hour is that people should verify the information before they post about it. And especially, the people who are famous because they are regarded as a trusted source of information.
I am a techie who love to hop in to new restaurant to try out different cuisine. I love my profession and like to share my knowledge with others because sharing is caring😉
This was awesome! I would like you to clean up all this spam though