My work was fairly theoretical. It was in recursive function theory. And in particular, hierarchies of functions in terms of computational complexity. I got involved in real computers and programming mainly by being - well, I was interested even as I came to graduate school.

I'm just an observer of Java, and where Microsoft wants to go with C# is too early to tell.

From an operating system research point of view, Unix is if not dead certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.

For books, I don't read much fiction, but like travel essays and good pop-science.

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

Pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX.

The True-GNU philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well as providing real software.