I'm Still Uncertain About The Language Declaration

C Is Peculiar In A Lot Of Ways, But It, Like Many Other Successful Things, Has A Certain Unity Of Approach That Stems From Development In A Small Group.

Obviously, The Person Who Had Most Influence On My Career Was Ken Thompson. Unix Was Basically His, Likewise C's Predecessor, Likewise Much Of The Basis Of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike Was The Real Force In Getting It Together). And In The Meantime Ken Created The First Computer Chess Master And Pretty Much Rewrote The Book On Chess Endgames. He Is Quite A Phenomenon.

Unix Is Simple And Coherent, But It Takes A Genius (or At Any Rate, A Programmer) To Understand And Appreciate Its Simplicity.

A Program Designed For Inputs From People Is Usually Stressed Beyond Breaking Point By Computer-generated Inputs.

C Was Already Implemented On Several Quite Different Machines And Oss, Unix Was Already Being Distributed On The Pdp-11, But The Portability Of The Whole System Was New