Isn't the solution to this puzzle that C is both too low-level (requires attention to the irrelevant) and not low level enough (you can only write a kernel/runtime/etc by lying to C and hoping it doesn't break)?
I thought the PDP-11 thing was a myth because C (or at least proto-C) predates the PDP-11
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You're thinking Ritchie's comments on B. C was done on PDP-11; but this is irrelevant: C presents roughly-same abstractions as many languages that came before it, and PDP-11 presents roughly-same architecture as many machines that came before it. Dies all cast by ~late 50s.
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The one significant thing about the PDP-11 was the shift from word-addressed memory to byte-addressed (and the promise of a future upgrade of a floating point unit). This prompted the addition of types (so the compiler would know when to emit byte ops etc) and name change to C.
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