>Do you remember the C++ Journal? The last page was occupied by a column called "Objuscated C++." The objective was to post valid code and let readers try to figure out what it did.
>
>I remember Tamar calling C a write-only language.
>

Actually, it was "obfuscated", but yes, I remember it. There were some really insane examples they had.

However, the "write-only" language is a cliché that was (largely) promoted by those who had written little or no C code.

I'll grant you there was quite a bit of nasty C code out there (and bad VB code, and bad T-SQL code, and yes, even bad Fox code). Certainly the nature of the language (not as high level as others, but not as low level as assembly) and the capabilities probably lended itself more to the kind of crazy examples out there. But the write-only language message was always specious.

And there was also efforts to promote very clean C code. Since you mentioned the C++ journal, you might also remember Dr. Dobbs Journal and the great columnist/author Al Williams - he published a large amount of great C and C++ code in his articles/books. The great developer/author Allen Holub produced an entire C book on how to write a compiler. It was a thick hardcover with a mountain of code - but it was amazingly accessible.