Introduction

The Book (1)

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The Definitive Book

  • Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie

  • First edition 1978 ⟶ “K&R” C

  • Second (and most recent) edition 1988 ⟶ ANSI C

  • Most recent standard: ISO/IEC 9899:2011 ⟶ C11

The Book (2)

  • C is a “small” language

  • Few central concepts ⟶ simple - theoretically at least

  • Complexity comes from the power of handling raw memory

  • The book is didactically perfect

  • Why should a C course be different?

  • ⟶ This course follows the book (loosely)

The Beginning

There was nothing …

  • … but the PDP-11

  • … and a couple of cool guys

  • Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie ⟶ C

  • Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie ⟶ first UNIX

  • Ken Thompson ⟶ first Shell

The rest is history!

Cool Guys and Their Hobby

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Kernighan and Ritchie
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Brian Kernighan

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Dennis Ritchie +2011

History of UNIX

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