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C Programming Language

Dennies Ritchie’s Contribution To Programming And Origin of C Language

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Nowadays computer science is a mandatory subject in schools. Though computer science is optional in high school, everyone acquires knowledge of basic computing at an early age. And, when we take steps towards learning how to code, we always start with the C language. At least most of us opt for it. The c programming language is one of the most famous and earliest programming languages around the world. The language can be used extensively for programming operating systems and embedded systems. After the first version by Dennis, so many versions of the language have come up but currently, C18 is the most recent.

About Founder

Dennis Ritchie
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Dennis Ritchie, an American computer scientist is the creator of the C language. He has also developed the Unix Operating System and B language. Dennis received many prestigious awards for his excellent works and contribution to society. He is one of the reasons our world has come so far in terms of technicality.

Early Life

Born into Bronxville, New York, Dennis moved to New Jersey at a very young age. Alistair E. Ritchie, one of the scientists of the Bell Labs was father to Dennis Ritchie. After the family moved to Summit, Dennis attended the Summit High School. Later, Dennis went to Harvard University and acquired degrees in Physics and Applied Mathematics.

Early Career

After graduating, Dennis joined Bell Labs in 1967. He was carrying out his Ph.D. under Patrick C. Fisher at Harvard University. But, he was never able to receive the degree officially. When Dennis started working at the Bell Labs, Ken Thompson worked as a colleague of him. Both of them were working on the Multics operating system.

During this time, Thompson discovered an old PDP-7 and he started developing an operating system along with Dennis. In 1970, the operating system which they named “Unix” was finally completed. Eventually, Dennis came up with the B language followed by the C language.

Origin of C Programming Language

After Dennis and Thompson developed the Unix operating system, they decided to port the operating system in PDP-11. Once they incorporated Unix, Dennis needed to come up with a new language or rather a new compiler to make use of this operating system in PDP-11.

Dennis started working in Fortran, but he gave up after some time because it wasn’t possible in that language. Then he started working with BPCL systems programming language but there wasn’t much information about the official description of the language.

Thompson along with Dennis came up with B language but the language was too slow and it didn’t adjust well with the features of PDP-11. So, Dennis tried to modify the language and make some changes. But, doing that led to the invention of a whole new programming language, that is, C.

In 1972, the C compiler was used for version 2 Unix and the fourth version of the OS was released in November 1973. The other versions of C were ANSI C, ISO C, C99, C11, and Embedded C.

Other Works

Apart from working with the C language and Unix operating system, Dennis also wrote a book, The C Programming Language along with Kernighan.

He also worked for the development of operating systems like Plan 9 and Inferno. Dennis also helped in creating the programming language, Limbo. Dennis worked for Lucent Technologies until he retired in 2007.

Awards and Achievements

In 1983, both Dennis and Thompson were honored with the Turing Award. They received for the award for making significant progress in the field of generic operating systems theory and for developing Unix. In 1990, again this couple bagged the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for both the Unix OS and C language.

This decade was followed by receiving a fellowship from the Computer History Museum in 1997. In April 1999, Bill Clinton awarded both of them with the National Medal of Technology. In 2005, Ritchie received the Achievement Award from Industrial Research Institute mainly for Unix. He was also honored with the Japan Prize for Information and Communications in 2011. Thompson received this prize along with him.

Retired Life

He worked for Lucent Technologies after leaving Bell Labs. In 2007, Dennis stepped down from the research department. He passed away on 12th October 2011. He was suffering from prostate cancer and heart disease.

Samaira Mehta : Little Fingers Running from Coding to Entrepreneurship

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samaira mehta
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Most of the children, at the age of six, are adjusting with their school’s environment, some have still not joined the school yet, and some brilliant minds of the same age, are working towards excellence, and making their ways into the tech world. Such gifted kid, from the Silicon Valley, is a ten years old Samaira Mehta, who has been into the limelight for her invention, at the age of eight, becoming one of the youngest entrepreneurs and a powerful motivational speaker.

Samaira Mehta, an Indian-American girl, was born on 4 March 2008, to Rakesh Mehta and Monica Mehta. Her father works as an engineer at Intel Co., and her mother worked in the field of marketing for more than a decade. Samaira was just six years old when her father started teaching her programming. The bright Samaira developed an immense interest in the same and started practising it. According to one of her interviews, she loved doing coding and playing the board games. Love for the two brought her the idea of mixing both of them and creating a board game that could help the people of age from 4-104, to learn to code in an easier way.

When Samaira turned eight, she finally decided to transform her idea into reality and launched a board game, naming it the CoderBunnyz. The game became popular in no time, and hence, Samaira co-founded a company, with her mother, given the same name to it as the game.

samaira mehta
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Little Samaira became a self-made entrepreneur at the tender age of eight. After the success of CoderBunnyz, she came out with its sequel CoderMindz. CoderMindz is based on the concept of Artificial Intelligence and is another hit. The game is first of its kind, and Samaira gives half of its credit to her younger brother Aadit Mehta, who assisted her in the development and is just six-years-old.

From basic to advance, the CoderBunnyz has thirteen levels, that makes the players grow their skills, with every step. The game has made a place among the Five Best Board Games of the World, that is a huge thing for anyone, at the age of ten. Before making up to the top five board games, it had already won the second-place prize of $2,500, from Think Tank Learning’s Pitchfest, in 2016.

After the launch of the game, Samaira started providing demo classes in libraries and schools, so that the kids could learn how to play. Soon, she received invitations for large tech events. Her game also grabbed the attention of the to tech giants, like Google and Microsoft, and they also organised the demo workshops for the game. Until now, she has done over 50 workshops in Silicon Valley, teaching over 2000 kids, including over 50 at Google. After the workshop at Google, she also received an offer of working with Google, as soon as she completes her college, by Stacy Sullivan, Google’s Chief Culture Officer.

Samaira also developed another board game, especially for the underrepresented girls, named as Girls U Code. Her achievement also brought her a letter of appreciation from the White House. Samaira has been featured in NBC, Sony, ZDF, Mercury News, sina.com and several media in three continents (North America, Asia, Europe) and over 11 countries. She spoke at the CMG Impact 2016 Women in Tech (2017), becoming the youngest speaker at CMG. She also gave a speech at the MyPowerTalk at Silicon Valley tech forum, in the same year, where she received a standing ovation from more than 400 women. The Cartoon Network also profiled her as the real-life “Powerpuff Girl”. She has received the Young Entrepreneur Award from the Silicon Valley, in 2017.

The big tech companies are all set to hire the young entrepreneur, but, it all it is up to her whether she will go with a multinational tech company or will run her own business. Until then, we can just watch her progress. Along with playing with codes and creating unusual board games, Samaira also loves to play guitar and archery. She is a supporter of girls education and wants to make people of every age fall in love with coding and programming.