1 year ago

For the closing keynote of the https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/20x, 80-year-old Unix pioneer Ken Thompson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaandEt_pKw of his 75-year project that combined his technologist’s spirit and his sense of humor — as well as his love of music. For his closing keynote, Thompson took a look back at the long arc of his evolving interests, sharing all the odd and inspirational twists along the way.

Young Thompson used it to provide the voice of a robot he’d built — and to record the music of a three-person band he’d joined.

A few years after Thompson https://thenewstack.io/could-unix-happen-today-brian-kernighan-looks-back-and-forward/, Thompson was still working on research at Bell Labs — which conveniently also had its own acoustic department.

And then Thompson tried to find MIDI versions of songs from his jukebox (orchestrated for just a single piano).