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From: Rich Morin <rdm@cfcl.com>
To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] more about Brian...
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2022 21:47:52 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <7C19F93B-4F21-4BB1-A064-0307D3568DB7@cfcl.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202202020747.2127lTTh005669@freefriends.org>

> On Feb 1, 2022, at 23:47, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> 
> ... in general, I think the principle of "ANYTHING written by Brian
> Kernighan is worth reading, at least once" applies, ...

I've been having a good time watching YouTube videos that have Brian either interviewing or being interviewed by assorted folks.  My favorite one, so far, is this "fireside chat":

	VCF East 2019 -- Brian Kernighan interviews Ken Thompson
	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o

In any case, the K&P book I'd _really_ like to see brought up to date is "The Elements of Programming Style".  It could have been subtitled "How to write small, simple programs that work."  It's still a very fine book, but I'm not sure that the current crop of beginning programmers would be patient enough to deal with the sadly dated example code.


If you're still here, I'll give you a vignette from many years ago.  My spouse and I were both early fans of AWK, having been introduced to it around 1983 by our friend Jim Joyce.  Indeed, she used AWK to process line printer plot files (dendograms, for the curious) into a format that my homegrown SunCore interpreter could render for screen display and printing on our dot matrix printer.  Some of them ended up in her Master's Thesis...

Anyway, we traveled with Jim to Copenhagen for a EurOpen conference.  At the closing banquet, I got to an empty table before anyone else and tossed down a "no smoking" placard.  Vicki and I then sat down.  Shortly thereafter, Brian walked past and saw the placard.

	Brian:  "Is this a non-smoking table?"
	Us: "It is now. (:-)"

So, he sat down and we had a chance to dine with a personal hero (and all-around nice guy). The next day, we got on a train to Stockholm, on our way to Helsinki (to teach a Unix Intro course with Jim).  Our four-person compartment turned out to include Brian, Vicki, me, and a long-suffering European businessman.  IIRC, we pestered Brian for hours about AWK, Bell Labs, and so forth.  He was unfailingly gracious and a wonderful person to spend the trip with.

-r


  reply	other threads:[~2022-02-03  5:48 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 64+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-01-31 20:46 [TUHS] ratfor vibe Will Senn
2022-02-01 15:37 ` arnold
2022-02-01 15:52   ` Ralph Corderoy
2022-02-01 16:58     ` Clem Cole
2022-02-01 17:02     ` silas poulson
2022-02-02  7:47     ` arnold
2022-02-03  5:47       ` Rich Morin [this message]
2022-02-03  7:44         ` [TUHS] more about Brian markus schnalke
2022-02-03  8:18           ` Rich Morin
2022-02-04  2:23           ` Adam Thornton
2022-02-04  2:34             ` [TUHS] more about Brian... [really Rust] Jon Steinhart
2022-02-04 13:07               ` Thomas Paulsen
2022-02-04 23:18               ` Dan Cross
2022-02-04  3:28             ` [TUHS] more about Brian Dan Stromberg
2022-02-04  5:11             ` Rich Morin
2022-02-04 21:22               ` [TUHS] Go vs. Rust, and etc. (was: more about Brian...) Greg A. Woods
2022-02-04 21:37                 ` Richard Salz
2022-02-04 22:32                   ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2022-02-04 23:05                   ` Thomas Paulsen
2022-02-04 23:15                   ` Seth J. Morabito
2022-02-05  1:41                     ` Adam Thornton
2022-02-04  7:38             ` [TUHS] more about Brian Andy Kosela
2022-02-04  8:10               ` Steve Nickolas
2022-02-04  8:44                 ` markus schnalke
2022-02-04  9:16                   ` Steve Nickolas
2022-02-04 18:54                 ` John Cowan
2022-02-04 19:45                   ` Thomas Paulsen
2022-02-04 20:28                     ` Hellwig Geisse
2022-02-04 21:03                       ` Jim Capp
2022-02-04 22:30                         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2022-02-04 22:25                       ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2022-02-06  0:56                       ` Larry McVoy
2022-02-06  1:10                         ` Will Senn
2022-02-06  4:52                           ` Rob Pike
2022-02-06  4:58                             ` Dan Halbert
2022-02-06  5:06                             ` Will Senn
2022-02-06  6:19                             ` Ed Carp
2022-02-06  6:27                               ` Rob Pike
2022-02-06  6:40                                 ` Stuart Remphrey
2022-02-06  6:44                                 ` Bakul Shah
2022-02-06 19:08                                   ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2022-02-06 12:52                                 ` Ralph Corderoy
2022-02-06 13:14                                 ` Ed Carp
2022-02-06 14:13                                   ` Dan Cross
2022-02-06 14:15                                   ` Larry McVoy
2022-02-06 16:31                                     ` Warner Losh
2022-02-06 18:36                                     ` [TUHS] more about Brian... [ really GC vs malloc/free languages ] Jon Steinhart
2022-02-06 19:27                                     ` Jon Steinhart
2022-02-06 19:33                                       ` Warner Losh
2022-02-06 19:37                                         ` Jon Steinhart
2022-02-06 20:21                                           ` [TUHS] COFF is over there Ralph Corderoy
2022-02-06 16:16                           ` [TUHS] more about Brian Brad Spencer
2022-02-08  5:22                             ` Ed Carp
2022-02-03 18:57       ` [TUHS] ratfor vibe silas poulson
2022-02-04  8:26         ` arnold
2022-02-04 19:41           ` John Cowan
2022-02-10 15:18       ` Ralph Corderoy
2022-02-03  4:00 ` Will Senn
2022-02-03  4:31   ` Al Kossow
2022-02-03  5:16     ` Warner Losh
2022-02-03 20:00   ` Adam Thornton
2022-02-04  6:06     ` Ori Idan
2022-02-04 17:35       ` Adam Thornton
2022-02-04 17:44         ` Will Senn

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