Language Design with Brian Kernighan
“The best computer science is the kind where the theory is inspired by some practical problem, you develop a better theoretical understanding of what you want to do, and that feeds back into better practice.” - Continue reading…
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Show Notes
“The best computer science is the kind where the theory is inspired by some practical problem, you develop a better theoretical understanding of what you want to do, and that feeds back into better practice.”
Brian Kernighan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and the author of several books, including “The Go Programming Language” and “The C Programming Language”, a book more commonly referred to as K&R. Professor Kernighan also worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie and contributed to the development of Unix.
Questions
- What are the timeless characteristics that define a successful programming language?
- How did people categorize languages 50 years ago?
- What would people have been posting on Hacker News in 1965?
- Why is Java so popular, and why do you think it’s strongly hyped?
- Computers have become more powerful over time – how has this affected language design?
- What are your thoughts on JavaScript?
- What did you learn while writing a book about Go?
- What did you learn about programming and life from working with Dennis Ritchie?
Links
- How to succeed in language design without really trying
- JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
- JavaScript: The Good Parts
- The Go Programming Language
- Plan 9
- The C Programming Language (K&R)
- Brian’s professor page
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