Brian Kernighan: Inside Bell Labs, The Best Programmer, Why C Won

Brian Kernighan shares stories from his time at Bell Labs, the creation of Unix and C, and his thoughts on programming history.

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: read.compose.llc/ • The Kickstarter page for it: kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergono… 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2yb6snndxGuhBJUGEUx39i • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835 • Transcript: 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 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: cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/ • Princeton University faculty profile: cs.princeton.edu/people/profile/bwk • Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻: • Newsletter: developing.dev/ • X/Twitter: x.com/ryanlpeterman • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ • Threads: threads.com/@ryanlpeterman • Instagram: instagram.com/ryanlpeterman • TikTok: tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲: • UNIX: Making Computers Easier to Use: youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw • Brian Kernighan’s first Harvard CS50 lecture (1996): youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba1XFVy7qw • A Beautiful Mind: universalpicturesathome.com/movies/a-beautiful-mind • Shifts: Important Ideas in Computing: amazon.com/Shifts-Nine-Ideas-Revolutionized-Computing/dp/026… • Labscam (Penn & Teller at Bell Labs, 1989): nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/labscam.html • Labscam video: youtube.com/watch?v=qnsmDNamd2g • Understanding the Digital World (new edition): amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-World-Computers-Internet/dp…