Book · 1978
The C Programming Language
by Brian W. Kernighan
The 1978 book that defined C's syntax, co-written by its creator, still cited by name 281 times across Reddit in 7 years.
What does Reddit think of The C Programming Language?
K&R is less a textbook than a primary source. Dennis Ritchie co-wrote the language and co-wrote the book; those are not separable facts. r/programming leads with 94 mentions and the references are almost always historical — the K&R abbreviation itself earns an ↑1094 comment just for naming it. r/ExperiencedDevs frames it as the original survival manual — an ↑258 comment notes that before Stack Overflow, the first or second edition of K&R was the only resource. Sentiment across all 13 subreddits reads as neutral, which makes sense: nobody argues about whether the book is correct. It wrote the spec.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · C language history and origins
- · Learning programming from first principles
- · Systems programming fundamentals
- · Reference documentation vs. pedagogical instruction
- · The Ritchie and Kernighan legacy
Common praise
- + r/programming cites it as the definitive origin point for C syntax — not a guide to C, but the source.
- + The ↑683 r/learnprogramming comment captures it: incomprehensible at first read, career-defining in retrospect.
- + r/ExperiencedDevs notes it functioned as the entire internet before the internet existed for systems programmers.
- + Its density works in its favor for reference use — r/programming comments frequently prefer K&R's chapter on a topic over lengthy modern blog posts (↑385).
Common criticism
- − r/learnprogramming beginners consistently report it as inaccessible without prior programming context.
- − The book predates C99, C11, and modern toolchains, so its code examples don't compile cleanly on current compilers.
- − It teaches undefined behavior as if it were defined — the ↑371 r/programming thread specifically calls out K&R's handling of uninitialized variables as 'dangerous thinking' by today's standards.
- − Almost no coverage of the standard library by modern expectations; it assumes you'll work out the gaps yourself.
Who it's for
If you already write C and want to understand where every decision came from, this is the primary source. Beginners who tried it and bounced — the r/learnprogramming pattern — are normal; come back after you can read a few hundred lines of C without losing the thread. Python programmers occasionally encounter it when tracing why Python internals look the way they do. The r/devops and r/sysadmin mentions are almost always nostalgic, from people who learned on it and reference it as the original field manual. It's not a tutorial. It never was.
Mentions over time
Which Reddit comments matter for The C Programming Language?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“And the K in K&R, referring to *The C Programming Language* book
“The first time I wanted to learn programming, I bought the first book on the c programming language I could find. I was completely lost and didn't understand anything. Not even why it was trying to teach the concepts it chose to teach. 30 years later I'm a professional. I still have that book, a…
“Primordial C is from 1972; you'll find examples in e.g. the Lions book. It won't compile on any post-standard compiler. The first "proper" C is K&R, from 1978.
“As a teen I had a job running statistics on some large data sets on the vax mainframe at a university. The data was on different drives and I had to call this weird 'load tape' script to switch from one to the other. I *cleverly* scripted the analysis programs to batch through the different data …
“I think the chapter in K&R where I originally learned the answer to this question is shorter than that blog post.
“> Any C programmer worth anything knows that this initializes i to an indeterminate value (for all intents and purposes, i is uninitialized). That's dangerous thinking. Reading a variable before it's initialized is Undefined Behaviour. The compiler isn't even obliged to allocate any stack space for…
“For those who are wondering “who?” He wrote *THE* book on the C Programming Language
“well theres nothing stopping you from learning more about that stuff if you want to, the big difference between now and then is back then they pretty much had to know everything, and if they didn't there was no internet or stack overflow, just probably the 1st or 2nd edition of the C programming la…
Convinced? Pick up The C Programming Language
Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with The C Programming Language — counted from the comments, not curated.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Harold Abelson
MIT's 1985 Scheme textbook that 319 Reddit commenters have recommended and a noticeably smaller number have finished.
Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
Randal E. Bryant
The CMU course-in-a-book that pushes programmers to read assembly, defuse a binary bomb, and stop pretending they understand what happens after main() returns.
Introduction to Algorithms
Thomas H. Cormen
The textbook four MIT professors wrote to settle every algorithms argument, cited by 254 Reddit commenters across 12 subreddits and still going.
The Art of Computer Programming
Donald E. Knuth
Donald Knuth's multi-volume monument to algorithms: the book programmers cite in library lists and almost nobody finishes.
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
Charles Petzold
A retired software engineer builds a computer from telegraph relays and flashlights, one chapter at a time, until you understand what a CPU actually does.
Effective Java
Joshua Bloch
Joshua Bloch's item-by-item case for writing Java the way the platform was designed to be used, with 90 independent recommendations that aged better than most of the language.
The C Programming Language — frequently asked
Is The C Programming Language still worth reading in 2026?+
Depends on your goal. For historical context and understanding C's design decisions, yes — r/programming references it 94 times over 7 years, usually as the authoritative source. For learning C from scratch today, r/learnprogramming data suggests beginners consistently struggle with it; a modern C book first, then K&R, is the pattern that appears in those threads.
What does Reddit actually say about The C Programming Language?+
The arguments are about whether it's teachable. r/ExperiencedDevs treats it as a historical artifact worth owning; r/learnprogramming threads are full of people who bounced off it early and circled back later.
Is The C Programming Language safe to follow for modern C code?+
Not entirely. A ↑371 r/programming thread directly challenges K&R's treatment of uninitialized variables as an example of 'dangerous thinking' — the book predates the undefined behavior rules that modern compilers enforce. Use it to understand how C was conceived, then cross-reference with the C11 standard or a modern systems programming text for anything production-bound.
Who are 'K&R' in The C Programming Language?+
Kernighan and Ritchie. Dennis Ritchie created C; Brian Kernighan co-authored the book. A ↑1094 r/programming comment literally exists just to explain this — 'the K in K&R' — which tells you how often the abbreviation circulates without context. Ritchie's death prompted the ↑344 r/Python comment identifying him as the author of 'THE book on the C Programming Language.'