In a 2013 interview with Electronic Design, Brian Kernighan described a gradual route into computing, how practical needs led him to C at Bell Labs, and why collaboration and clear explanation mattered as much as language design. His answers are a first-person retrospective, not a current biography.
How did Brian Kernighan get started with computers?
Kernighan recalled that he first saw a computer as a college student. He learned some Fortran and Cobol, then began learning programming in graduate school. A summer at Project MAC at MIT persuaded him to pursue the field; later summers at Bell Labs helped make that direction stick. He credited the people around him, the computing environment, and having a productive language to work with.
That account comes from Kernighan’s recollection in the November 5, 2013 Electronic Design interview; it should be read as his description of his path, not as a separately verified timeline.
How did he get involved with C?
Kernighan said C became central to his work because it was the practical language for writing code for the new Unix system at Bell Labs around 1972 or 1973. He worked in the same group as Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Having written a tutorial for B, he revised it into a C tutorial and then began writing application programs in C.
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What was it like writing The C Programming Language?
Kernighan called the collaboration with Ritchie “Incredibly rewarding in every way.” In his account, he drafted most of the tutorial chapters, while Ritchie wrote the system-programming sections and Appendix A, the reference manual. They then took turns refining and polishing the book. This describes Kernighan’s recollection of their division of work rather than a complete account of the book’s authorship.
The book first appeared in 1978 and was updated in a second edition in 1988, according to a separate 2012 InformIT interview about C and the book. That conversation also distinguishes the book’s purpose: it teaches the C language, while Kernighan’s later D is for Digital offers a broad, nontechnical introduction to computing.
Which language and tool projects did he find most interesting?
AWK and collaboration
Kernighan singled out AWK as especially instructive because he developed it with Al Aho and Peter Weinberger. The project is an example of his collaborative work on tools aimed at particular programming needs.
EQN and specialized languages
He remembered EQN, developed with Lorinda Cherry, as fun. It let users describe mathematical expressions in words so they could be typeset. Kernighan said the experience contributed to his continuing interest in specialized languages for unusual domains.
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Ratfor and changing needs
Ratfor was Kernighan’s Fortran preprocessor. It added C-like syntax and control flow to make programming in Fortran more expressive at the time. He said the need for it later diminished as Fortran’s syntax evolved.
What did Kernighan say about teaching and explaining technology?
In the 2013 interview, Kernighan explained that D is for Digital grew out of a Princeton course for humanities and social-science students. The intended audience was people who wanted to understand computing and communications technology without specializing in it: how systems work, and how to assess claims about technology thoughtfully. The interview described his Princeton role as current in 2013; it does not establish his position today.
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- The Unix Programming Environment (Prentice-Hall Software Series)
- Product Type: ABIS_BOOK
- Pearson
In a separate 2012 InformIT conversation, he said programming education should help students write useful code that works and can be maintained and modified. He also discussed testing, mechanical test harnesses, group projects, and coordination as skills that extend beyond any one programming language. Those views are from that 2012 interview, not statements made in the 2013 Electronic Design conversation.
How does this interview fit into Kernighan’s writing history?
Kernighan’s interest in explaining good programming extended beyond language manuals. In a Computer History Museum oral history published in 2017, he recalled Dick Hamming urging that programmers needed books about how to program well. An example of poor programming in a numerical-analysis book helped inspire The Elements of Programming Style, which Kernighan wrote with Bill Plauger. The oral history also discusses the origins of Software Tools and AWK.
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A later Microsoft Learn conversation page dated 2021 covers topics including his early experiences, “hello, world!”, programming education, tools, remote learning, and technology’s social effects. Its page provides useful context for the topics he has discussed in interviews, but it does not by itself establish details beyond the information it presents.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the 2013 interview can—and cannot—tell readers
The interview is most useful as a compact first-person account of how Kernighan connected practical work, collaboration, language tools, teaching, and writing. Its comments about what he was doing “now,” including his Princeton role and his approach to keeping up with computing, describe 2013 rather than the present. For example, he said at the time, “It’s kind of a losing battle, but worth the effort anyway.”
It is not a current career profile or a definitive history of Unix, C, or every book and project mentioned. Read it for Kernighan’s own reflections, and use the dates and attributions attached to the separate interviews and oral history when drawing on their additional context.
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