If you use OS X, Android or iOS you shouldn’t be thankful for Steve Jobs or Google. Well not entirely anyway. Sure, they played a big part in their respective developments. But there is one man who played a much bigger part.

OS X, Android and iOS are written using a programming code called ‘C‘. Two other programming codes are used for OS X, Android and iOS are C++ and Objective C (they are basically just later versions of ‘C’), but ‘C’ has been a foundation of both of these operating systems since their beginning.

Anyway, to get to my point. C was invented by a man called Dennis Ritchie. He invented it while working at Bell Labs between 1969-1973. Dennis Ritchie passed away this past week at the age of 70 in his home.

No-one really heard about his passing. Dennis Ritchie was a huge player in the personal computing world. I especially like this quote about him.

“As the news of his death spread throughout the computer science world, historians and computer enthusiasts compared the bearded, introverted Dr. Ritchie to media-savvy Apple co-founder Steve Jobs“

And this one.

“It’s sort of ‘apples’ and oranges,” said Paul Ceruzzi, a Smithsonian historian and expert on the history of computers. “Ritchie was under the radar. His name was not a household name at all, but . . . if you had a microscope and could look in a computer, you’d see his work everywhere inside.”

Dennis Ritchie was a big player in the development of the computers, mobile phones, iPod’s and media centres that we use today.

I am thankful for him.