Bookshelf Classic: The C Programming Language
My first job had me programming in Microsoft BASIC for the IBM PC (DOS). BASIC worked well enough, but its limitations were clear. The language was interpreted and therefore slow. More importantly, it wasn't a modern structured language, and instead, relied on line numbers and the GOTO statement. Anyone who has read Dijkstra knew GOTO was a bad thing . Having learned a structured language in college ( PL/I ), using BASIC felt unnatural. When a C compiler became available for the PC, I saw a chance to improve and modernize our software. The problem was selling the idea -- a problem made harder because I wasn't fluent in C. "It would be a staffing problem. Not many people know C, but we can find a lot of programmers who know BASIC," noted one manager. The argument was strong as my knowledge of C was weak. But I knew that C, by design, was a small language and thus easy to learn. "It has about 30 keywords," I proffered to another manager. U