I remember being absolutely thrilled when function prototypes were introduced with the 'proposed' ANSI C standard (X3J11). The first implementation I got my hands on was Borland's Turbo C circa 1988.
The standard now known as C89/C90 had been in committee for many years before being 'released'. This didn't stop the tool vendors (like Borland) from supporting the 'proposed' standard much earlier than 1989.
Unfortunately, commercial UNIX vendors (like HP, in my case), were very slow to adopt the standard and update the cc compiler in their distribution. This forced us to work in K&R for a good time after 1990, all the while grumbling that $150 MS-DOS compilers already 'had ANSI'.
The standard now known as C89/C90 had been in committee for many years before being 'released'. This didn't stop the tool vendors (like Borland) from supporting the 'proposed' standard much earlier than 1989.
Unfortunately, commercial UNIX vendors (like HP, in my case), were very slow to adopt the standard and update the cc compiler in their distribution. This forced us to work in K&R for a good time after 1990, all the while grumbling that $150 MS-DOS compilers already 'had ANSI'.