Brian Wilson Kernighan

• Unix user name: bwk
• Commands written: pic, eqn with Lorinda Cherry, ditroff, m4
• Languages created:
  • AWK with Al Aho and Peter J. Weinberger.
  • AMPL (A Mathematical Programming Language) with Robert Fourer and David Gay.
  • Ratfor with P. J. Plauger.
  • m4 with Dennis Ritchie.
• Favorite books: The Mythical Man Month, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, How to Lie With Statistics.
• Text editor of choice: Sam.

Books

Brian Kernighan is probably the best technical writer in the history of computer science.

• Software Tools (1976 with PJ Plauger)
• Software Tools in Pascal (1981 with PJ Plauger)
• The C Programming Language (aka ‘K&R’, ‘The C Bible’, etc.) (1978, 1988 with Dennis M. Ritchie)
• The Elements of Programming Style (1974, 1978 with PJ Plauger)
• The Unix Programming Environment with Rob Pike. (1984)
• The AWK Programming Language (1988 with Al Aho and Peter J. Weinberger)
• The Practice of Programming with Rob Pike. (1999)
• AMPL: A Modeling Language for Mathematical Programming, 2nd Ed. (2003 with Robert Fourer and David Gay)

Papers and Articles

• Program Design in the UNIX Environmen (aka *cat -v Considered Harmful“) with Rob Pike.
• A Descent into Limbo - An introduction to the Limbo programming language.
• Timing Trials, or, the Trials of Timing: Experiments with Scripting and User-Interface Languages with Christopher J. Van Wyk.
• Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language.