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Brian Kernighan

File:Brian_Kernighan_at_VCF_East_2.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Brian Kernighan

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Also known as Brian W. Kernighan, Brian Wilson Kernighan

Canadian computer scientist, co-inventor of the Unix operating system

Person · Open Library

Born
1. Januar 1942
Works
30

Top works

  • The elements of programming style
  • Practice of Programming
  • The Go Programming Language
  • Le langage C - 2e éd.
  • The C Programming language

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
United Kingdom
Active from
1948-05-15
ambientart popart rockbritishdroneelectronic

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
35
Total plays
131

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Brian+Kernighan">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Brian Kernighan

Quotes

  • Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
  • The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.
  • Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
  • Do what you think is interesting, do something that you think is fun and worthwhile, because otherwise you won't do it well anyway.
  • C is a razor-sharp tool, with which one can create an elegant and efficient program or a bloody mess.
  • Mechanical rules are never a substitute for clarity of thought.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
Brian Wilson Kernighan , ( 1942-01-30 ) 30 January 1942 (age 84) , Toronto , Ontario , Canada
Citizenship
Canada
Alma mater
University of Toronto ( BASc ), Princeton University ( PhD )
Known for
Unix AWK A Mathematical Programming Language (AMPL) Kernighan–Lin algorithm Lin–Kernighan heuristic The C Programming Language (book)
Fields
Computer science
Institutions
Princeton University
Thesis
Some Graph Partitioning Problems Related to Program Segmentation (1969)
Doctoral advisor
Peter Weiner
Website
www .cs .princeton .edu /~bwk /

via Wikipedia infobox

~7 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Brian Wilson Kernighan (/ˈkɜːrnɪhæn/; born 30 January 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist. He worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of Unix alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan's name became widely known through co-authorship of the first book on the C programming language (The C Programming Language) with Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan affirmed that he had no part in the design of the C language ("it's entirely Dennis Ritchie's work").

Kernighan authored many Unix programs, including ditroff. He is coauthor of the AWK and AMPL programming languages. The "K" of K&R C and of AWK both stand for "Kernighan".

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Brian Kernighan” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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