David Korn (computer scientist)

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David Korn received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1965 and his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1969. After working on computer simulations of transsonic airfoils and developing the Korn airfoil,http://aero-comlab.stanford.edu/Papers/Garabedian.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=March 2022}} he switched fields to computer science and became a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories in 1976. He developed Korn shell in response to problems he and his colleagues had with the most commonly used shells at the time, Bourne shell and C shell. The Korn shell pioneered the practice of consultative user interface design, with input from Unix shell users, and from mathematical and cognitive psychologists.{{citation needed|date=November 2015}} The user interface, which included a choice of editing styles (the choices included styles based on vi and on two variants of Emacs) was incorporated into, or copied by, most subsequent Unix shells. The Korn shell is backward-compatible with Bourne shell, but takes a lot of ideas from C shell, such as history viewing and vi-like command line editing.

Microsoft once included a version of the Korn shell produced by Mortice Kern Systems (MKS) in a UNIX integration package for Windows NT.{{discuss|poorly sourced anecdote}} This version was not compatible with ksh88 (a Korn shell specification), and Korn mentioned this during a question and answer period of a Microsoft presentation during a USENIX NT conference in Seattle in 1998. Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager who was participating in the presentation, not knowing who the commenter was, insisted that Microsoft had indeed chosen a "real" Korn shell. A polite debate ensued, with Sullivan continuing to insist that the man giving the criticisms was mistaken about the compatibility issues. Sullivan only backed down when an audience member stood up and mentioned that the man making the comments was none other than the eponymous David Korn.{{cite web

|title=NTnx 98...You Are There

|at=Section: Microsoft's "Services for UNIX"

|first=George M.

|last=Jones

|type=Recap of USENIX LISA-NT 1998 conference, published in USENIX's own ;login:

|url=https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt98/ntnix.html

|url-status=live

|access-date=2025-03-28

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160606014657/https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt98/ntnix.html

|archive-date=2016-06-06

|quote=Last but not least in the UNIX/NT integration arena, we must mention Microsoft's "Services for UNIX," announced during the NT futures session. Herein lies a story. Greg Sullivan, the Microsoft product manager for "Services for NT," gets up to describe the product. They're including the Intergraph NFS client and server, "telnet clients and servers that [really work]," and some UNIX command line tools and shells. People asked what the source of the tools and shells was. "MKS." So, a guy goes up to the microphone and starts pointing out where the MKS Korn shell deviates from the specs for the various versions of the Korn shell. To which Mr. Sullivan replies, "Well, do you know of anything better?" To which someone else in the audience replies, "That's David Korn." Can you say "setup"? Can you say "lion's den"?

}}{{cite web

|title=David Korn Tells All

|type=Interview with David Korn

|date=2001-02-07

|website=Slashdot

|url=http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/06/2030205

|access-date=2025-03-28

|url-status=live

|archive-url=https://news.slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-korn-tells-all

|archive-date=2012-08-20

}}{{cite mailing list

|mailing-list=freebsd-chat

|title=It's easier to port a shell than a shell script. -- Larry Wall

|type=A person's take on the David Korn encounter

|author=

|date=1998-08-29

|url=https://mail-archive.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199808290627.BAA01517

|access-date=2025-03-28

|url-status=live

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250328194421/https://mail-archive.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=156953+0+archive/1998/freebsd-chat/19980823.freebsd-chat

|archive-date=2025-03-28

}}

Along with Korn shell, he is also known as the creator of UWIN,David G. Korn, "UWIN—UNIX for Windows", Conference: Proceedings of the USENIX Windows NT Workshop on The USENIX Windows NT Workshop 1997 an X/Open library for Win32 systems, similar to the later Cygwin. Korn and Kiem-Phong Vo also co-developed sfio,Korn, David G. and Kiem-Phong Vo. “SFIO: Safe/Fast String/File IO.” USENIX (1991). a library for managing I/O streams.

Korn became a Bell Labs fellow in 1984.{{citation needed|date=May 2014}} He currently lives in New York City, and until 2013 worked for AT&T Labs Research in Florham Park, New Jersey,{{cite web|last1=Fowler|first1=Glenn|title=[ast-users] dgk & gsf status|url=http://lists.research.att.com/pipermail/ast-users/2013q4/004368.html|website=lists.research.att.com|access-date=27 November 2014|date=1 October 2013|archive-date=30 November 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151130233422/http://lists.research.att.com/pipermail/ast-users/2013q4/004368.html|url-status=dead}} and he retired from Google in early February 2018.{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/dgkorn|title = Dgkorn - Overview|website = GitHub}}{{cite web |url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-korn-b23185 |title=David Korn |website=LinkedIn}}

His parents were Florence{{cite web |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/recordonline/name/florence-korn-obituary?id=28428498 |title=Archived copy |website=www.legacy.com |access-date=14 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311112022/https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/recordonline/name/florence-korn-obituary?id=28428498 |archive-date=11 March 2022 |url-status=dead}} and Nathaniel Korn. The Korn family moved to Monroe in 1947 where they raised five children.

In 1967 he married Susan Lyn Weiner.{{Cite web|url=https://milestones.marquiswhoswho.com/milestone/david-gerard-korn/|title=David Gerard Korn}}

David Korn's son Adam used to work at Goldman Sachs.{{cite news |last1=Hoffman |first1=Liz |last2=Demos |first2=Telis |title=Wall Street Erases the Line Between Its Jocks and Nerds |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-erases-the-line-between-its-jocks-and-nerds-1534564810?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1 |website=Wall Street Journal |date=18 August 2018 |publisher=Wall Street Journal |access-date=20 August 2018}}{{cite news|last1=Hoffman |first1=Liz |title=King of Goldman's 'Straders' to Leave Firm|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/king-of-goldmans-straders-to-leave-firm-11580786325|website=Wall Street Journal|date=4 February 2020 |publisher=Wall Street Journal}}

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.kornshell.com/~dgk/ David Korn homepage] on [http://www.kornshell.com/ Kornshell.com]

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Category:1943 births

Category:Living people

Category:Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni

Category:American computer programmers

Category:Unix people

Category:Scientists at Bell Labs

Category:Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences alumni

Category:Google employees

Category:AT&T people