Sam wasn’t always a programmer—actually he started in his later teens, in part because he was more of a jock, and in part because he was related to programmers and wanted to do his own thing. But, like all great programmers, once he was bitten by the bug he immersed himself completely in it.

One day Sam happened to be talking programming with his uncle, who was also a programmer but from way, way back.

“Hey,” said Sam, “I’m learning this language called C. You must know a lot of languages, did you ever study C?”

“No,” said the uncle, to Sam’s surprise. “I am one of the very few programmers who never had to learn C.”

“Because I wrote it.”

Oh, Sam’s last name is Ritchie.