Brian Kernighan is a former Bell Labs member of technical staff, co-author of the original C book, and the one who popularized “Hello World.” We talked about what Bell Labs was like and the stories behind all the famous tools that were built there.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2yb6snndxGuhBJUGEUx39i
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e072-brian-kernighan

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲’𝘀 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00: 00 Intro
00: 42 What Bell Labs was and how he got hired
06: 34 Why so many inventions came from Bell Labs
14: 15 A day in the life at Bell Labs
27: 55 The most impressive people he worked with
33: 50 The AT&T film explaining Unix
39: 46 Why C was so influential
43: 25 How awk was created
48: 40 What he misses most about Bell Labs
54: 10 Are LLMs bad for computer science education
01: 01: 46 His 1972 commit in the Go repo
01: 03: 43 Grace Emlen, the fake Bell Labs employee
01: 07: 39 Why he writes so many books
01: 19: 58 His favorite and least favorite languages
01: 24: 28 Advice for students and young people
01: 27: 42 Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻:

• Personal website: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/
• Princeton University faculty profile: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/people/profile/bwk
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲:

• UNIX: Making Computers Easier to Use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw
• Brian Kernighan’s first Harvard CS50 lecture (1996): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba1XFVy7qw
• A Beautiful Mind: https://www.universalpicturesathome.com/movies/a-beautiful-mind
• Shifts: Important Ideas in Computing: https://www.amazon.com/Shifts-Nine-Ideas-Revolutionized-Computing/dp/0262064294/
• Labscam (Penn & Teller at Bell Labs, 1989): https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/labscam.html
• Labscam video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnsmDNamd2g
• Understanding the Digital World (new edition): https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-World-Computers-Internet/dp/0691288879