I learnt it a few years before that, and I remember how reading K&R once I got it felt like having someone turn UP the lights, open the blinds, wash the windows and basically TURN UP THE SUN compared to things I read before. So much clarity.
Number of times I've seen trigraphs in "real code": still zero. I hope it's the same for you.
I read it at a similar time, and I remember that feeling well. However, if you revisit it with a critical eye, you find a hundred places where a result isn’t checked, bounds aren’t checked, memory is leaked and so on.
All of this was pretty much fine in the context in which it was written, but these days bullet-proofing things is pretty much mandatory and K&R’s elegance disappears in the face of such challenges.
Well yeah, but there is a difference between teaching the mechanics of a language, and teaching how to write safe, correct and secure code in that language.
Perhaps that mindset is part of what made C survive for so long and in such diverse roles.
Number of times I've seen trigraphs in "real code": still zero. I hope it's the same for you.