Pure nerd

Click here to see a photo of Brian Kernighan, the guy who wrote the book about C, the programming language.

He's a pretty nerdy-looking guy. He's currently a professor at Princeton University, which demonstrates one benefit of attending college at an elite university like Princeton; you get to be taught by semi-famous people.

Comments

[faffy]

He looks professional and non-nerdy to me. How is an older guy supposed to look that isn't nerdy? Sitting shirtless on a Harley Davidson motorcycle with tattoos up and down his body?

[Peter]

At age 70 I rather doubt he cares too much about the whole Alpha/Beta scene anymore.

[Steve]

The benefit of taking a class with a famous professor is that you get to say you took a class with a famous professor. There isn't much relation between fame and ability to teach.

[Alex]

"At age 70 I rather doubt he cares too much about the whole Alpha/Beta scene anymore."

Good observation.

Halfsigma, you should stop reading Roissy sometimes, it is soulless and soul-killing to be obsessed daily about sex.

[HS: I was not criticizing him, but merely awed by how a famous computer scientist so perfectly fits the old nerd stereotype.]

[chucho]

I get nostalgic when I see Web 1.0 homepages. Will people in the future look at them the way we do antiques? "It's not genuine; the site counter is much too modern."

[fresh off the boat brown]

"I was not criticizing him, but merely awed by how a famous computer scientist so perfectly fits the old nerd stereotype."

Every old computer scientist fits the old nerd stereotype. Is there even an example of one who doesn't, so that we should be unsurprised by your surprise?

[anonymous]

You may not be interested in the Alpha/beta scene, but the alpha/beta scene is interested in you

[Dan]

Ha, but he is an alpha nerd.

He is married and if he wasn't he'd be catch. He is high status in his own way. In a world where few people achieve anything of note, he has done some extraordinary things.

If he was a much younger man I'd be happy and proud to have one of my pretty daughters marry him.

Someone with real accomplishment needs zero game.

Here's the famous, overweight nerd economist Noriel Roubini sloshed and with a hottie on each arm.

http://peakwatch.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83452403c69e2014e8927de5f970d-pi

[Alcibiades]

Not really understanding the point of this post, HS. Was it just to make a few strangely passive-aggressive remarks about this man?

[HS: Why do all of my posts have to have a point?]

[destructure]

I have that book.

[art.the.nerd]

Hey, Half, fuck you. When you're seventy years old you'll be remembered, if at all, for some cynical posts on career choices and NAMs. Kernighan helped create the modern computer software industry. He should be recognized and celebrated as much as Steve Jobs is.

[HS: I am letting the personal insult go because you are right, Kernighan, and other important contributors to computer science deserve more fame than they get. Our capitalist society only respects the guys like Jobs and Gates who became rich, while genuine value creators who invented the C language, but didn't get any money from it because they were employees, are old forgotten college professors.]

[alonzo portfolio]

How come Deadheads, who often look exactly like this, don't get called Nerds? And, he's actually better-looking than, say, George Lucas. If he had Lucas' money or anything near it, I could see him tooling down the road in a 365 Ferrari with a luscious blonde, can't you?

[Anthony]

To make a really successful programming language requires a great beard. http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/beard-gallery/

[Sanjuro]

I have always found that John McCarthy had the ultimate mad computer scientist look: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/science/26mccarthy.html?pagewanted=all

If anything, I would say that figures like Kernighan and the late McCarthy, plus the late Unix/C inventor Dennis Ritchie, have (and had) the look of many venerable figures in CS/Math (e.g. John Conway). Too bad hipsters have appropriated those thick rimmed glasses that McCarthy wore until the end of his life, though...

[Comrade]

UCLA has the best looking nerd profs.

[Alex]

"I have always found that John McCarthy had the ultimate mad computer scientist look: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/science/26mccarthy.html?pagewanted=all"

Yeah, McCarthy is pretty bad-ass. He actually makes nerdiness mainstream and respectable, along the handsome nerdy journalists of Engadget, The Verge and Gawker.

[Alex]

Screw me, I confused McCarthy with John McAfee.

What confused my mind was your assertion that McCarthy looks like a "mad scientist"; McAfee suits the definition better IMO, in the, well, crazy and powerful way.

[Sanjuro]

"What confused my mind was your assertion that McCarthy looks like a "mad scientist"; McAfee suits the definition better IMO, in the, well, crazy and powerful way."

I had this pic in mind:
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/135/361777836_cf850b4d0f_z.jpg?zz=1

My use of "mad scientist" is only in the most respectful terms. Look at McCarthy here: couldn't you just imagine him planning to takeover the world with an army of robots equipped with his A.I. (programmed in LISP, of course). Einstein similarly had the look of the deep thinker (an all too rare visage among the dull crowd of today). McCarthy had the look of the mad scientist while remaining, in reality, the definition of rationality.

Seriously though, check out the minds in this pic. Claude Shannon (left of McCarthy) of information theory fame, and Weizenbaum (far right) chatterbot inventor and AI critic.

McAfee, on the other hand, seems to be simply mad. Bath salts will do that, I suppose.

[Samson J.]

****He looks professional and non-nerdy to me. How is an older guy supposed to look that isn't nerdy? Sitting shirtless on a Harley Davidson motorcycle with tattoos up and down his body?****

My thoughts exactly. He's a got a righteous beard, for crying out loud! I was expecting someone Bill Gates-looking.