Brian K

Last Monday I attended an ACM lecture featuring Brian “Zapp” Kernighan, coiner of the name “Unix,” the ‘K’ in awk, as well as the ‘K’ in K&R. The gray-haired professor reminisced about the golden days sitting across from Ken Thompson’s and Dennis Ritchie’s desk (Ritchie is a slob of the first order). The salient points: make software more simple, avoid the second system effect (as in Multics), and find a small group of talented guys and start a revolution (probably not in operating systems). In other words, a pretty good summary of The Mythical Man Month.

A bunch of nerds got him to sign their copies of The C Programming Language. It was sad.