As always, "kids" == younger than me. But no, I've never used a teleprinter for anything serious.

Still, the evidence of their recent departure is all around us. vi (short for "visual", because the idea of a visual editor was still pretty novel) didn't even exist until 1976.

But I hope you wouldn't be amazed that a book written in 1978 made reference to common technology at the time.

The whole point of this post was the original K&R C, so why wouldn't they reference/assume teletypes?