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.

One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.

A new release of Plan 9 happened in June, and at about the same time a new release of the Inferno system, which began here, was announced by Vita Nuova.

A program designed for inputs from people is usually stressed beyond breaking point by computer-generated inputs.

Steve Jobs has said that Xwindows is brain-damamged and will disappear in two years. He got it half-right.

... with proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed.

I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate