Re-coded Jokes

In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian
Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an
elaborate prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development
Forum, Thompson revealed the following:
"In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I
had started work with an early release of Pascal from Professor Niklaus Wirth's ETH labs in
Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished
reading' Bored of the Rings', a National Lampoon parody of the Tolkien's' Lord of the Rings' trilogy.
As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were
responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new OS to be as
complex and cryptic as more...