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I was reading "The C Programming Language" as a teenager, probably around 1994. I had a question, so I looked up Brian Kernighan's email* and wrote him. Ten min
by nope96 5y ago
I was reading "The C Programming Language" as a teenager, probably around 1994. I had a question, so I looked up Brian Kernighan's email* and wrote him. Ten minutes later I had a well written answer that explained my issue. It didn't seem like a big deal to teenage me, but now - wow, that was the magic of the early internet.
* There is a small chance I am remembering this wrong, and I'd written Dennis Ritchie instead. I know I wrote to either K or R :)
- psyc 5y agoSomeone once advised me that I should do this when so moved. Since then I have emailed various luminaries, and I don't think I've yet failed to get a helpful response. Anything from a URL, to a sentence, to 2 paragraphs.
- mindcrime 5y agoSimilar thing here, but the email was to P.J. Plauger. At the time he was the editor of C/C++ User's Journal and I had a question about something I read there, and shot him an email. Didn't really expect anything of it, but I got a helpful reply.