[pixelmonkey]

This is a lovely 30-minute read on the history of the C programming language, written by Dennis Ritchie (dmr), one of its authors.

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html

Here's a comment I wrote about it elsewhere:

https://lobste.rs/s/hba9nn/development_c_language_1993#c_hw6...

One other essay that comes to mind is the 1945 piece by Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think", that lays out the vision for a "Memex", or memory extension device, in the direction of what PCs and smartphones eventually became.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

I think it's nice to reflect on a time, not too long ago, where these devices were a mere figment of a scientist's imagination, only to materialize decades in the future. What can you dream up today?