A Brief History of C

Before we dive deep into our discussion of functions, a bit of background on the evolution of the C language is in order.

Way back when, in the early 1970s, a group of programmers at AT&T's research arm, Bell Laboratories, created the first C compiler. Two of the programmers on that team, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, wrote a book that described the rules a well-formed C program must follow. That book was called The C Programming Language and became the de facto standard reference for all C programmers. The book was fondly referred to as K&R, named for the initials of the authors' last names.

During the 1980s, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) worked to establish a more formal, national standard for the C programming language. This standard was formally ratified in 1989 and became known as ANSI C. The new standard was also commonly referred to as C89. A new version of K&R was published in 1988 based on the updated ANSI C standard.