Software Engineering Daily

Language Design with Brian Kernighan

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“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

      • The post Language Design with Brian Kernighan appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

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