Linux Journal: Interview with Brian Kernighan

“LJ: What was your part in the birth and
destiny of the C language?

“BK: I had no part in the birth of C, period.
It’s entirely Dennis Ritchie’s work. I wrote a tutorial on how to
use C for people at Bell Labs, and I twisted Dennis’s arm into
writing a book with me. But, if he had been so motivated, he
certainly could have done it without help. He’s a superb writer, as
one can tell from the C reference manuals, which are his prose,
untouched. I’ve profited a great deal from being part of the book,
and I treasure Dennis as a friend, but I didn’t have anything to do
with C.

“LJ: What do you think: is C a high level
language?

“BK: C is perhaps the best balance of
expressiveness and efficiency that has ever been seen in
programming languages. At the time it was developed, efficiency
mattered a great deal: machines were slow and had small memories,
so one had to get close to the efficiency of assembler. C did this
for system programming tasks–writing compilers, operating systems
and tools…”

Complete
Story