Who invented pointers

My guess for the first one: ptr is a pointer to a function that takes as parameter an int, and returns a pointer to a function that takes as parameters a pointer to pointer to double and a char, and returns a pointer to float.

Interpretation:

(*ptr)(int)

says that ptr is a pointer to a function taking an int as an argument. To discover what that function returns we need to expand our view:

(* (*ptr)(int))

this means the function returns a pointer to another function. The parameters of that other function are:

(double **,char c)

and it returns

float *

And for the second one: ptr is a pointer to an array of five pointers to functions that take as parameters a constant pointer to char and a pointer to int, returning a pointer to a pointer of unsigned int.

Interpretation:

( * (*ptr) [5] )

declares ptr as a pointer to array of five pointers to a function taking

(char const *,int *)

as arguments and returning

unsigned **

Short version: C was before OOP's time, so it wasn't a design choice.

Object oriented programming, OOP, is an old idea. But as a cultural phenomenon it only took off in the 80's and 90's. As someone born in the 80's I'd say it was C++ that launched the hype, set the trend, started the buzzword, or otherwise got OOP off the ground. That turned it from an academic pet project to something businesses looked for on resumes. And that's the sort of statement out of ignorance that will get the grey-beards to come out of the woodwork claiming that it was really Delphi or some other language that was the igniter. And they'll be countered by the historians that can show some Renaissance Italian first had the concept of oriented objects. And the whole thing ends in flames. But trust me, OOP really took off well after C was designed.

History aside, C is a low-level language and as such it can implement nearly anything that the higher level languages take for granted. You can implement a system that acts like C++'s inheritance. You can implement a system that acts like Java's reflection. Whatever crazy design patterns these young whippersnappers come up with in their fancy dancy new languages will probably be able to be implemented in C. Whether or not it's a good idea, is another issue.