I continue to be amazed by Ken Thompson's name popup in unexpected places even after all these decades. When I first learned that co-creator of Unix also invented Regular Expressions I was surprised. Then I came to know about that elegant hack of inserting malware in compiler that's practically invisible. And then Ed... Then Chess... And then UTF... And then Go... It feels like Ken Thompson is Newton of Computer Science. If you randomly open up a section of physics book 3-4 times, you are very likely to read something about Newton's contribution. Even what's more cool about him is this humble down-to-earth line from his Turing award lecture:
I am a programmer. On my 1040 form, that is what I
put down as my occupation. As a programmer, I write
programs.
It would be great to create a website that showcases all of his contributions in detail.
I am a programmer. On my 1040 form, that is what I put down as my occupation. As a programmer, I write programs.
It would be great to create a website that showcases all of his contributions in detail.