He's been the maintainer of glibc (still a developer), and a variety of other key bits of open source software. He's kind of famously abrasive/obtuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2378013. The paper was kind of a canonical work, referenced by most everyone (which is no doubt why there's a copy of it on the FreeBSD site).
I’m always a little confused by the hype of KnR. It seems like just an introduction on the syntax of c?
It doesn’t seem to really tell you how to build great programs with C or anything more complex than the absolute basics which you can find on the internet for free.
I found the Annotated ANSI C Standard by Herbert Schildt to be far more helpful in understanding C syntax than the K&R book ever was. I was lucky enough to find it in a local book store while still in high school in 1993.
That's a different book than the one I was referring to. I was referring to The Annotated ANSI C Standard: American National Standard for Programming Languages-C : Ansi/Iso 9899-1990.
I learned C in the early 90's with one of Schildt books. I actually did learn something. So there is that. It has a place close to my heart but I have to agree with most. It's not a great book.
I wish I would have a couple of good examples at hand, though
