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Dennis Ritchie RIP

Posted Oct 14, 2011 4:13 UTC (Fri) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955)
In reply to: Dennis Ritchie RIP by Baylink
Parent article: Dennis Ritchie RIP

There are at least:

Unix versions 3-6 (not sure how large the changes were between these)
Unix version 7 / K&R 1st edition
ANSI C89 / ISO C90
ISO C99
ISO C11

But I don't think most C programmers have been much affected by changes after 'ANSI C', even though they are important to some.

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Dennis Ritchie RIP

Posted Oct 14, 2011 16:44 UTC (Fri) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

I recently had to change some code to compile with an older compiler, and the only C99 feature that I found hard to give up is the ability to declare variables anywhere in a block, instead of just at the top. It's easy to get used to that.

Dennis Ritchie RIP

Posted Oct 21, 2011 17:19 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

But I don't think most C programmers have been much affected by changes after 'ANSI C', even though they are important to some.

And they weren't even affected much by ANSI C. How often do you see "const" and bit fields used in C?

Tradition seems to be a big part of the culture of C. In addition to this not embracing new features, I think of tab characters and editor choice. I think that love of tradition accounts for its persistence more than anything.