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The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

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Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#81

Post by alexdowad »

agbell wrote: post #29
alexdowad wrote: post #25

Adam, you said at the end of the interview that you are looking for ways to grow your listener base. Well... I guess you got exactly what you were looking for, between interviewing Brian Kernighan and being featured on Hacker News... That's probably a good formula to go by: get interviews with "big names" who have done incredible things in the field, make the content as good as you can, and submit to HN. Personally I…

Oh, I would love to interview him as well! Great idea, if anyone has a connection to him let me know. I spend way too much time lurking on hacker news so having this show up here is both exciting and frightening for me ... be careful what you wish for.

I suggest you just try his e-mail address: fabrice at bellard dot org.

Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#82

Post by anthk »

tomcat27 wrote: post #22

I read the K&R's C Programming book when I was in undergrad. It's different from other programming books I read from APress, O'Reilly publications. Hard to digest but never before read a book so short and crisp that fully explains the programming language. To any noob programmer out there, I'd say pick K&R's book, spend a semester on it, do the exercises. You will become better engineer. You'll not regret.

Add the Orelly UNIX CD Books and you'll have a vast compendium for AWK, sed, perl and scripting.

Also, they are free.

Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#83

Post by duderoso »

bronson wrote: post #19
agbell wrote: post #15

Thanks for submitting this. I did the interview. I think you have to listen to it to get the full experience. But here are some things that were interesting and surprising from the interview: The UNIX room - The unix room at bell labs was a shared room where they would hang out and have coffee. Some people worked exclusively in the UNIX room, like Ken Thompson, but most worked in their private offices and came to the…

I love Brian Kernighan interviews so I was eager to listen. I have mixed feelings. You would often make a point and then play snippets from him supporting it. You often gave yourself center stage and used him as evidence. I found it overedited and synthetic, more a performance than an interview. I came for BWK and left unsatisfied. If that's the style you were going for, that's fine. Maybe it's just my expectations.…

i bet you give great code reviews

Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#84

Post by pjmlp »

> Multics was not a success. Bell Labs pulled out of the project, no more operating system work at Bell Labs. It was a waste of time, that became the sentiment of management. Ken in particular thought the system was too complex, but it was interactive and it was far ahead of this batch processing punch card world.

Nope, in fact it even had a better security model that UNIX clones are yet to achieve.

https://multicians.org/myths.html#fail69

Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#85

Post by tmd83 »

I was looking for interviews/videos with Dennis Ritchie but I couldn't find any one that's over a few minutes.

I also wondered if there are sources from any of their (Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson and the group) work hopefully in C or something that I can actually understand.

Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#86

Post by Ice_cream_suit »

Pro :

1. It is great to hear Brian Kernighan's account of the early history of Unix.

2. It was wonderful to hear about his interactions with one of my personal heroes, Richard Hamming. Hamming's book on error correction (Coding and information theory) is amazing.

3. It is very kind of Adam Gordon Bell to make these wonderful interviews available. These interviews are oral history that will never again be available once the interviewees are gone.

Con:

1. The interviewer talks far too much about irrelevant trivia and often talks at greater length about than the people being interviewed.

2. It has the feel of Adam Gordon Bell interviews Adam Gordon Bell. A little less Bell and more of the interviewee would have been less irritating and easier to listen to.

Despite my caveats, I intend to download and listen to many more of these interviews on my commute to work.

Keep up this historically important work, but please let the interviewees talk without continually interrupting.

Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#87

Post by tomcat27 »

yencabulator wrote: post #74
tomcat27 wrote: post #22

I read the K&R's C Programming book when I was in undergrad. It's different from other programming books I read from APress, O'Reilly publications. Hard to digest but never before read a book so short and crisp that fully explains the programming language. To any noob programmer out there, I'd say pick K&R's book, spend a semester on it, do the exercises. You will become better engineer. You'll not regret.

For more of a "today's look" as opposed to the way C was written back then, http://www.gopl.io/ is almost as good, still the same style, meant to be digested not skimmed lightly.

Thanks! I haven't had a chance to write Go, never learned it too. Maybe some day. Will remember the author's book.

Re: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

#88

Post by swyx »

bronson wrote: post #19
agbell wrote: post #15

Thanks for submitting this. I did the interview. I think you have to listen to it to get the full experience. But here are some things that were interesting and surprising from the interview: The UNIX room - The unix room at bell labs was a shared room where they would hang out and have coffee. Some people worked exclusively in the UNIX room, like Ken Thompson, but most worked in their private offices and came to the…

I love Brian Kernighan interviews so I was eager to listen. I have mixed feelings. You would often make a point and then play snippets from him supporting it. You often gave yourself center stage and used him as evidence. I found it overedited and synthetic, more a performance than an interview. I came for BWK and left unsatisfied. If that's the style you were going for, that's fine. Maybe it's just my expectations.…

there are people who feel strongly the opposite way - this format offers more context, cuts out small talk, allows the narrator to construct a story. to each their own... perhaps the OP could release the raw audio if they wished to cater to both
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