I first read about C in the early 80s in BYTE magazine, when they had a full issue on the language.  (According to the archives, it was August 1983).  After learning BASIC, pointers and function declarations really opened my eyes.  It would be several years before I could actually compile anything, but it quickly became my main development language.   My early copy of K&R is quite worn now, and I could quote it, chapter and verse.

In a world of iPhones with one-year half lives, it’s amazing to consider that C has been in use, in nearly original form, for over 40 years, and it’s the basis or major influence for many of today’s mainstream languages.  It’s even more amazing that most machine instructions executed world-wide are compiled C (and C++) programs (and I suspect this is by a wide margin).

C is a simple but brilliant language, and Dennis Ritchie taught us the importance of finding solutions and designs that are simple and elegant.  We will miss him.