At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas?

First news of his death came from his former colleague Rob Pike. His name was not a household name at all but.

Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007. Ritchie and Thompson received the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983 the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999. Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (born September 9 1941; found dead October 12 2011) was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era.