I've often heard that the C declarator syntax described as "an experiment that failed." I've seen claims that this sentiment is also shared by its creator Dennis Ritchie. Does anybody have an actual citation for this?
I'm doing a related project and writing the documentation for it and it would be nice to have said citation.
FWIW, I have found where Bjarne Stroustrup said it during a Slashdot interview:
The flip side of this is that you have to deal with old mistakes and with compatibility problems. For example, I consider the C declarator syntax an experiment that failed. Nevertheless, I adopted it for C++. The alternatives and improvements I considered at the time would not have improved matters. I rate is as a minor problem. The more serious problem is to maintain closeness of language definitions as C evolves.
but I'd rather have a citation from Ritchie if one exists. Yes, I tried Googl'ing for it (which is how I found the Stroustrup citation), but nothing for Ritchie.