Brian Kernighan

If you don't understand viruses, phishing, and similar threats, you become more susceptible to them. If you don't know how social networks leak information that you thought was private, you're likely to reveal much more than you realize.

No matter how non-technical your life and work, you're going to have to interact with technology and technical people. If you know something about how devices and systems operate, it's a big advantage.

Anytime you want to hear about graph partitioning, I will be glad to tell you what I know about graph partitioning. It remains a standard problem. I think it's an interesting problem, because it shows up in a variety of guises in real life.

I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.'

Working with franchises can be challenging, but at the same time I really did enjoy working on 'Star Wars,' for example, and I have done a lot of 'Dungeons & Dragons' games, but I still enjoy it very much.

When I was a student at Princeton University, I was working part time in a grocery store. I saw an ad for teachers of a prep course. I don't remember what it paid, but it was easily double or triple the minimum wage.