History and Spirit of C
summary
Claims that C is BCPL boiled down through B to fit a PDP‑7 and that Ken Thompson writes a nearly complete OS in about four weeks. Shows the concrete chain: BCPL (Martin Richards) → B (BCPL squeezed into 8k) → C (types added for PDP‑11), then UNIX rewritten in C (1972) and made portable by the portable C compiler. Notes K&R’s book, C standardization (1989, 1999) and C11’s adoption of the C11 memory model from C++.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00History and spirit of C
- 2:25EDSAC to C roots
- 9:501960s programming languages
- 17:30BCPL ancestor of C
- 27:07Creation of B and C
- 31:46C portability and popularity
- 33:54Simula influence and C++
- 37:12C and C++ relationship
- 40:23Future of C
