In this special episode of Book Overflow, Brian Kernighan once again joins Carter and Nathan, this time to discuss his book Unix: A History and a Memoir. Join them as Brian recounts what it was like working at Bell Labs, how it feels to have contributed so much to the world of computing, and whether or not he thinks creating a big idea like Unix is still possible!
-- Videos mention in this video --
@Computerphile Characters, Symbols and the Unicode Miracle (UTF-8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MijmeoH9LT4
-- Books Mentioned in this Episode --
Note: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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Unix: A History and a Memoir
https://amzn.to/3YVnlYv (Paid Link)
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver
https://amzn.to/4hGnIxo (Paid Link)
Origin Story: The Trials of Charles Darwin by Howard Markel
https://amzn.to/3UKEfGP (Paid Link)
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00:00 Intro
02:18 Bell Labs, Unix, and What prompted the book?
07:02 Doug McIlroy and the Simplicity of Unix
13:12 Was Unix inevitable?
22:00 Getting Scrappy, PIP-11, and document preperation
27:35 tools, composability, and patterns
33:04 awk, snobol and associative arrays
35:27 Small Teams and Big Ideas
41:58 Plan 9 and UTF-8
49:41 Life After Bell Labs
54:00 Humilty and Collaboration at Bell Labs
55:22 Long Term Influences of Unix (pipes, programmable shell, composition of tools, stdin, stdout, stderr)
59:46 Closing Thoughts
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5kj6DLCEWR5nHShlSYJI5L
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/book-overflow/id1745257325
X: https://x.com/bookoverflowpod
Carter on X: https://x.com/cartermorgan
Nathan's Functionally Imperative: www.functionallyimperative.com
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Book Overflow is a podcast for software engineers, by software engineers dedicated to improving our craft by reading the best technical books in the world. Join Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups as they read and discuss a new technical book each week!
The full book schedule and links to every major podcast player can be found at https://www.bookoverflow.io