If you enjoyed Brian Kernighan’s video on the genesis of the name “grep”, you will probably also enjoy the three-part Q&A with Kernighan in which he discusses programming, C, and C’s successors.
Kernighan is personable and a great speaker so the videos are easy to watch and absorb and, of course, they’re interesting. It turns out the along with the languages you’d expect, Kernighan also coded in what he describes as the world’s worst COBOL.
He makes a point that is often forgotten today. In the days of early C, it was the best language for text manipulation even though it’s not really a very good language for it. That’s undoubtedly why most of the Unix utilities (as opposed to the OS itself) were written in C.
Each of the three videos are short. The first one is here. There are pointers to the next in the comments below each of the videos.
Coda
Since I wrote this, Mike Zamansky has published his own post on these videos. Zamansky has an interesting story about Kernighan that restates something I’ve read many times over the years: Kernighan is a really nice guy who will go out of his way to be helpful even if he doesn’t know you. Be sure to check out Zamansky’s post too.