Will Javascript Take Over the World? | Brian Kernighan and Lex Fridman

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Brian Kernighan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University. He co-authored the C Programming Language with Dennis Ritchie (creator of C) and has written a lot of books on programming, computers, and life including the Practice of Programming, the Go Programming Language, his latest UNIX: A History and a Memoir. He co-created AWK, the text processing language used by Linux folks like myself. He co-designed AMPL, an algebraic modeling language for large-scale optimization.

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[nagualdesign]

When I started learning JavaScript 20 years ago I never imagined being able to write programs for mobile phones.

[shahrikamin]

“Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.”
— Jeff Atwood

[cryto-alex]

It was such a pleasure listening to this genius (Brian) and what a fine personality he exhibits. You guys are so fortunate to have him at MIT. I also noticed he wears a $1 watch, which goes to show that the simple life is what counts.

[albin]

Seriously though, it boggles my mind how big the whole javascript web dev ecosystem is. I just know how to use some of the endless number of tools and frameworks, and that in and of itself takes time, and in another 5 years time the whole ecosystem is completely different XD

[xCAFEFD]

A more worrying prospect than ai takeover.

[hornfan]

Lex your clips!!!! Way to adapt to Youtube's common growth. Clips = digestable, and the long form is not mutually exlusive! This is a great clip for me a beginning coder curious about the broader subjects

[jerickodoggo]

As some one who learned Javascript in school. I was INFURIATED by libraries. I get super anxious if I don't understand how something is working in case it breaks... If you're working on a group project and you're the "programmer guy" for the team. If shit isn't working its definitely going to be your fault - or at least you should be able to fix it. As a new programmer, they really made me anxious when I was learning something from somebody and the first thing they say is, " Alright before we get started download libraries x & y, etc..."

[tysully]

I enjoy your content, never stop exploring and learning

[spoddie]

It's a shame that people like Brian don't get the public recognition they deserve. Within comp sci of course he's well known, but his contribution to society isn't really well known.

[Thorstorm]

How can I possibly say when people ask me that I know javascript when the writer of the most iconic C language book considers himself a non expert on the subject??

[jayartist_]

I hated JS when starting with it, as I came from working with Java and C#. Now I absolutely love it

[BangMaster]

Brian Kernighan, possibly one of the most important Computer Scientist in history

[joseortiz_io]

This is awesome! Glad to see you were able to interview him!

[zebrawien]

Javascript has its pros and cons. Thats about it. Use it wisely, it is a wonderful language.

[metallicbeast]

Thank you Brian, your contribution to humanity is huge, hats off to you good sir and I hope to invite you a beer if you visit Las Vegas.

[exvimmer]

I know JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go and C and I'm learning other languages while I'm keeping myself updated. I love JavaScript, but I think TypeScript will be more important than JS, because of its types and strictness.

[uppdids]

This notion that you have no idea what you're pulling down via pip or npm is completely false, it's highly encouraged to look at the code you're adding to your app. You don't simply google, install and then hope it all works out - you have to dig into the libraries, compare options and figure out if it's what your project needs.

[markw]

Them: You probably don't want to program a nuclear power plant with Javascript.

Me: Hold my beer.

[OFficRK]

_"JavaScript was seen as probably the ugliest language possible"_
I must admit that syntactic sugar and spread of libraries that restrict developers to a certain way of thought has improved "the JavaScript experience", but there are still so many ways you can shoot yourself in the foot and write absolutely insane spaghetti code that I still don't recognize JavaScript as being on par with other "classic" languages. And I write JS code daily.

[AbhishekSharma-elnu]

"and down comes gazillion megabytes of something..". Kind of like the fact that he used MB. lol