Web search saver: Ada '83 spec is 338 pages (https://quicksearch.dla.mil/qsDocDetails.aspx?ident_number=3...)

For C life is easy as you can leave things undefined with the caveat "dragons may fly out of your nose" :)

An alternative example of a small spec language might be Scheme (especially pre-R6RS): https://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/r5rs.pdf

Nobody wants to write 83 and the later additions are far more extensive than C99 and 11.

But k&r 2 was the point of comparison, that's c89 right?

K&R 2 represents the bulk of the modern language. You can't be very productive knowing just Ada83.

Right. But the question was historical (so I interpreted it at least).

Shouldn't those versions be compared to C++ though?

The problem is that using C in practice is not covered by K&R.

Any better books you recommend?

Programming Rust by O'Reilly, haha.

I get why this is downvoted but it is solid advice: in C you absolutely have to track ownership and lifetimes of pointers and pointees, but the compiler is free to not help you in any way. Learning rust will make you a better programmer. Thus, the recommendation is very good.

It is not solid advice to suggest a book that's not even about the language that's being asked about.

There's a number of reasons why it's not solid advice, but here's a huge one: you have no context for why the person is asking. Maybe they already know Rust, and want to learn C. It comes off extremely poorly. I downvoted your parent myself, even.

It's OK Steve, Jesus was also misunderstood :-).

I would not draw that comparison. You knew it was bad behavior, hence the "haha." You're understood just fine, it's just not going to have the effect you want.

I would rather have Hepatitis C than C.

Learning any language makes you a better programmer

Using* any language and writing non-trivial programs.