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> the only advantage that the paper offers is that Checked C seems to have a higher degree of backwards compatibility.

In fairness, that's a big deal, especially when trying to port a large existing code base.

Yes, compatibility is at least 80% of the deal with C. The "C" in C stands for compatible.

And me thinking that C follows B in the US English alphabet.

I read that it was so named because C follows B in "BCPL"

> After creating the type system, the associated syntax, and the compiler for the new language, I felt that it deserved a new name; NB seemed insufficiently distinctive. I decided to follow the single-letter style and called it C, leaving open the question whether the name represented a progression through the alphabet or through the letters in BCPL.

http://cm.bell-labs.co/who/dmr/chist.html

B stands for before C

> The "C" in C stands for compatible.

Source?

Wiki says:

> A successor to the programming language B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix.

> In 1972, Ritchie started to improve B, which resulted in creating a new language C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language

It's a play on words

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