I was lent a copy of K&R by an English teacher¹ in my high school (this was 1984ish). I still remember the smell of coffee and nicotine that was imbued in its pages and any time I deal with C code, the sense memory comes back to me.
For a while, under the influence of K&R and The TeXbook, I contemplated going to Stanford to study computer science and then working at Bell Labs. I did neither.
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1. About ten years ago, I decided to try to reach out to him and thank him and comment about how out paths kind of were the inverse of each other—he had a degree in computer science but ended up teaching high school English, I had a degree in English and ended up programming computers—and I discovered that he had died a few months previous. Whenever possible, get in touch with those who influenced you earlier if just to say hi and thanks.
For a while, under the influence of K&R and The TeXbook, I contemplated going to Stanford to study computer science and then working at Bell Labs. I did neither.
⸻⸻⸻
1. About ten years ago, I decided to try to reach out to him and thank him and comment about how out paths kind of were the inverse of each other—he had a degree in computer science but ended up teaching high school English, I had a degree in English and ended up programming computers—and I discovered that he had died a few months previous. Whenever possible, get in touch with those who influenced you earlier if just to say hi and thanks.