11 ms·

Brian Kernighan on C [video]

103 points by kozukumi 11y ago

sago 11y ago
I love his wristwatch, just perfect. I hope there's more of this interview computerphile will release in due course. It is a fascinating time to hear about from the guys who -- essentially -- engineered our profession.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  The 2000 interview of bwk is one of the best, in case you haven't read it before: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.htm...
- markcerqueira 11y ago
  I was fortunate enough to take a course taught by Brian Kernighan. Each lecture was a gem in and of itself. Lots of stories about his work at Bell Labs and how things came to be the way they are today. Professor Kernighan is also a great guy who is extremely personable and had every student's name learned by the second week. Absolutely impressive human being all around!
  - kozukumi 11y ago
    He comes across as a great guy in all the interviews I have seen of him. Chilled but still excited about the amazing things he has worked on. On a related note I absolutely love the Computerphile videos with Professor Brailsford. I could listen to that guy talk all day.
- robotmlg 11y ago
  His watch looks like a Casio F-91W, or another cheap Casio
  - sago 11y ago
    Like a 105, yeah, nicely spotted. I do love those 1980s / early 90s Casios.
faragon 11y ago
Compare how thin is the C book from Kernighan vs the C++ book from Stroustrup. The result is that most people can fully understand C easily (if willing to), while the C++ case is impossible. C is beautiful.
- kozukumi 11y ago
  Indeed. C is a beautiful language. Sure it has its problems if you use it poorly, which is very easy to do, but used properly it is still my favourite language. I find that problems I solve with C are generally solved better in the sense that simpler and easier to read and understand is better.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Really? I like C but I'm not sure it's beautiful, compared to a LISP or some sort of ML. And my limited experience says that C programs involve a ton of boilerplate code dealing with copying bytes around. Every time I see a loop doing a series of if/elseifs to parse command line options, I think this is very much not beautiful.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Lisp and ML represent quite different models of computation. For a register machine, C can be pretty beautiful. It's funny you talk about parsing command line options. Plan 9 solved that problem well with the arg(2) macros. [1] In fact, Plan 9 in general is a premier example of really clean and elegant ANSI C-compatible code. [2] [1] http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/arg http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/arg [2] e.g. https://github.com/0intro/plan9/blob/master/sys/src/libndb/ndbhash.c https://github.com/0intro/plan9/blob/master/sys/src/libndb/n...
    - kabdib 11y ago
      Read the V6 Unix sources. They are seriously pretty. A file system in maybe a thousand lines of code. A scheduler and swap manager, a TTY layer, and device drivers with nearly no waste. You can read the code in an afternoon and understand it and make changes to it. Even in crusty pre-ANSI C, it's very elegant stuff. (Then I look at the Bourne shell sources and weep. It's like the author of that was in denial of everything that made C a decent language and wanted desperately to be doing something else)

103 points by kozukumi 11y ago

sago 11y ago

I love his wristwatch, just perfect. I hope there's more of this interview computerphile will release in due course. It is a fascinating time to hear about from the guys who -- essentially -- engineered our profession.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
The 2000 interview of bwk is one of the best, in case you haven't read it before: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mihaib/kernighan-interview/index.htm...
markcerqueira 11y ago
I was fortunate enough to take a course taught by Brian Kernighan. Each lecture was a gem in and of itself. Lots of stories about his work at Bell Labs and how things came to be the way they are today. Professor Kernighan is also a great guy who is extremely personable and had every student's name learned by the second week. Absolutely impressive human being all around!
- kozukumi 11y ago
  He comes across as a great guy in all the interviews I have seen of him. Chilled but still excited about the amazing things he has worked on. On a related note I absolutely love the Computerphile videos with Professor Brailsford. I could listen to that guy talk all day.
robotmlg 11y ago
His watch looks like a Casio F-91W, or another cheap Casio
- sago 11y ago
  Like a 105, yeah, nicely spotted. I do love those 1980s / early 90s Casios.

faragon 11y ago

Compare how thin is the C book from Kernighan vs the C++ book from Stroustrup. The result is that most people can fully understand C easily (if willing to), while the C++ case is impossible. C is beautiful.

kozukumi 11y ago
Indeed. C is a beautiful language. Sure it has its problems if you use it poorly, which is very easy to do, but used properly it is still my favourite language. I find that problems I solve with C are generally solved better in the sense that simpler and easier to read and understand is better.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Really? I like C but I'm not sure it's beautiful, compared to a LISP or some sort of ML. And my limited experience says that C programs involve a ton of boilerplate code dealing with copying bytes around. Every time I see a loop doing a series of if/elseifs to parse command line options, I think this is very much not beautiful.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Lisp and ML represent quite different models of computation. For a register machine, C can be pretty beautiful. It's funny you talk about parsing command line options. Plan 9 solved that problem well with the arg(2) macros. [1] In fact, Plan 9 in general is a premier example of really clean and elegant ANSI C-compatible code. [2] [1] http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/arg http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/2/arg [2] e.g. https://github.com/0intro/plan9/blob/master/sys/src/libndb/ndbhash.c https://github.com/0intro/plan9/blob/master/sys/src/libndb/n...
  - kabdib 11y ago
    Read the V6 Unix sources. They are seriously pretty. A file system in maybe a thousand lines of code. A scheduler and swap manager, a TTY layer, and device drivers with nearly no waste. You can read the code in an afternoon and understand it and make changes to it. Even in crusty pre-ANSI C, it's very elegant stuff. (Then I look at the Bourne shell sources and weep. It's like the author of that was in denial of everything that made C a decent language and wanted desperately to be doing something else)