TONIGHT: Steve Bourne on Shell

[George Rosamond]

**NOTE that the meeting has been moved to 730 PM EDT and not the usual
645 PM EDT** (but coming earlier is fine)

The Design of Unix Shell, Stephen R. Bourne
2026-05-13 @ 19:30 EDT (23:30 UTC) - Backroom of Brass Monkey 55 Little
West 12th St

Remote participation: Plans are to stream via NYC*BUG website. Q&A will
be via IRC on libera.chat channel #nycbug - please preface your
questions with '[Q]'.

Some relevant reading for the meeting might be Stephen’s 1978 piece in
The Bell System Technical Journal entitled “UNIX Time-Sharing System:
The UNIX Shell” https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1971 (Bell System
Technical Journal, Vol 57, No 6, 1978).

Steve Bourne is internationally known for his work on the UNIX operating
system. During his career he spent 20 years in senior engineering
management positions at computer systems and networking companies. These
included Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment and Silicon
Graphics. Since 2000 he has been Chief Technology Officer at El Dorado
Ventures (now Rally Ventures) in Menlo Park, California.

He is past chair of the ACM Queue board, a magazine that he started in
2003 for software practitioners.

Steve spent nine years at Bell Laboratories as a member of the Seventh
Edition UNIX team. He designed the UNIX Command Language sh or “Bourne
Shell” which is used for scripting in the UNIX p rogramming environment
and he wrote the adb debugger tool. His book “The UNIX System” was
widely read and published in 1983.

Nearest NYC Subway is the 14th Street/Eighth Avenue station L, A, C, E.

To get to the backroom, you must enter the front door, follow the long
bar on your left, and walk all the way to the back. At the rear of the
BrassMonkey, you will see an alcove for the 3 bathrooms our room is off
to your right.