The Genesis of C

by Ian Cargill (with apologies to the original authors)
(First appeared in Vol 7 Issue 4 of C Vu, the journal of the Assn of C and C++ Users)
  1. In the beginning Dennis created the compiler and the preprocessor.
  2. And the program was without form, and void; and assembler was upon the face of the coding sheets. And the Spirit of Dennis moved upon the face of the programmers.
  3. And Dennis said, Let there be compilation: and there was compilation.
  4. And Dennis saw the compilation, that it was good: and Dennis divided the keywords from the identifiers.
  5. And Dennis called the compiler C, and the darkness he called Assembler. And the compiler and the preprocessor were the 0.1 beta release.
  6. And Dennis said, Let there be operators in the midst of the statements, and let it divide the operands from the operands.
  7. And Dennis made the built-in types, and divided the integers which were under the CPU from the floats which were under the floating point processor: and it was so.
  8. And Dennis called the code modules functions. And the compiler and the preprocessor were the 0.2 beta release.
  9. And Dennis said, Let the operands under the compiler be gathered together unto one place, and let the precedence rules appear: and it was so.
  10. And Dennis called the precedence rules a good joke; and the gathering together of the operands called he Memory-Test: and Dennis saw that it was a bit of a hoot.
  11. And Dennis said, Let the comparison operators bring forth 1 or 0, the pseudo-boolean, and the short-circuiting operators after his kind, whose result is in itself, a sort-of boolean: and it was so.
  12. And the relational operators brought forth logical operators, and logical expressions yielding pseudo-booleans after his kind, and the comparison operators yielding 0 or 1, whose value was in itself, after his kind: and Dennis saw that it was still a bit of a hoot.
  13. And the compiler and the preprocessor were the 0.3 beta release.
  14. And Dennis said, Let there be loops in the statements of the compiler to divide the code into blocks; and let them be for creating off-by-one errors:
  15. And let them be loops in the code of the compiler to give loops around the code: and it was so.
  16. And Dennis made two great statements; the greater, if, to rule the day, and the lesser, switch, to rule the night: he made the else also.
  17. And Dennis set them in the code of the compiler to give selection upon the data values,
  18. And to decide between this and that, and to divide the EOF from the valid characters: and Dennis saw that it was good.
  19. And the compiler and the preprocessor were the 0.4 beta release.
  20. And Dennis said, Let the operands bring forth abundantly the subtle bugs that hath life, and memory leaks that keep the programmer guessing.
  21. And Dennis created great structures, and every array, which the pointers were confused with, after their kind, and every indirection operator after his kind: and Dennis saw that it was good.
  22. And Dennis blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the code in the compilers, and let implicit casts multiply in the code.
  23. And the compiler and the preprocessor were the 0.5 beta release.
  24. And Dennis said, Let the compiler bring forth the obfuscated programs after his kind, utilities, and operating systems, and beasts of compilers after his kind: and it was so.
  25. And Dennis made the compilers of the C language after his kind, and programs after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the Unix file system after his kind: and Dennis saw that it was good.
  26. And Dennis said, Let us make programmers in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the compilers of the C language, and over the operating system calls, and over the file system, and over all the heap memory, and over every little utility that creepeth upon the system.
  27. So Dennis created programmers in his own image, in the image of Dennis created he him; male and female created he them, though inexplicably more of one than the other.
  28. And Dennis blessed them, and Dennis said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the compiler, and subdue it: and make it an ANSI standard, and then an ISO standard.
  29. And Dennis said, Behold, I have given you every operator which is necessary, and every statement, in which is the form of a few keywords; to you it shall be easy.
  30. And Dennis saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the compiler and the preprocessor were the 0.6 beta release.
  31. Thus the compiler and the pre-processor were finished, and all the host of them.
  32. And on the seventh day Dennis issued the 1.0 release of the compiler; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
  33. And Dennis blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which Dennis created and made.
  34. These are the generations of the compiler and the pre-processor when they were created, in the day that Dennis made the pre-processor and the compiler.