VCF East 2019 -- Brian Kernighan interviews Ken Thompson

In the 1960s-1970s, Ken Thompson co-invented the UNIX operating system along with Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. He also worked on the language B, the operating system Plan 9, and the language Go. He and Ritchie won the Turing Award. He now works at Google. He’ll be interviewed by Brian Kernighan of “K&R” fame. This talk took place May 4, 2019. Videography courtesy of @thegurumeditation (Facebook), @thegurumeditate (Twitter) Vintage Computer Federation: VCF Discord: 0:00 Start of Video, Introductions and Updates 8:13 Start of Fireside Chat 11:02 How Ken got to Bell Labs 17:25 Origins of UNIX 22:40 Three weeks away from an OS 29:27 The PDP-11 32:48 Pipes 35:42 GREP 38:40 Languages and Evolution 46:25 Chess Computers 1:02:40 End of Chat