Kenneth Cutts Richard Cabot Arnold (born 1958) is an American

computer programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

well known as one of the developers of the 1980s dungeon-crawling

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

'' Rogue'', for his contributions to the original

Berkeley Software Distribution The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginn ...

(BSD) version of

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

, for his books and articles about C and C++, ''e.g.'', his 1980s–1990s '' UNIX Review'' column, "''The C Advisor''", and his high-profile work on the

Java platform Java is a set of computer software and specifications that provides a software platform for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms fr ...

At Berkeley

Arnold attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, after having worked at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...

computer labs for a year, receiving his A.B. degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

in 1985. At Berkeley, he was president of the Berkeley Computer Club (later known as the Computer Science Undergraduates Association), and made many contributions to the 2BSD and 4BSD Berkeley Unix distributions, including: * curses and

termcap Termcap ("terminal capability") is a legacy software library (computing), library and database used on Unix-like computers that enables programs to use display computer terminals in a terminal-independent manner, which greatly simplifies the proc ...

: a hardware-independent library for controlling cursor movement, screen editing, and window creation on ASCII display terminals, based on termcap (based on

Bill Joy William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO ...

's vi screen control code). Curses was a landmark display

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

that made it possible for a vast number of new applications to create full-screen user interfaces that were

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

between different brands of display terminal. * '' Rogue'': Arnold, Michael Toy, and Glenn Wichman co-wrote ''Rogue'', a full-screen

role-playing video game Role-playing video games, also known as CRPG (computer/console role-playing games), comprise a broad video game genre generally defined by a detailed story and character advancement (often through increasing characters' levels or other skills) ...

that presented a then-novel view of the "dungeon" from above (rather than via textual description as in the older ''

Zork ''Zork'' is a text adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson (programmer), Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company ...

'' and ''

Adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...

''). It spawned an entire genre of " roguelike" games. * fortune: a fortune cookie program. Although Arnold's quote-displaying program was not the first in history, as the BSD standard it became by far the most widely used, and its database of quotes was voluminous. It also standardized a plain-text

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

that was philosophically aligned with Unix and thus became widely used both for other fortune programs as well as non-fortune purposes. * ctags: a program for generating cross-references in computer source code.

Selected bibliography

* JavaSpaces. Principles, Patterns, and Practice; Eric Freeman, Susanne Hupfer, Ken Arnold; * The Java Programming Language; 4th Edition; Ken Arnold,

James Gosling James Arthur Gosling (born 19 May 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java (programming language), Java programming language. Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of E ...

, David Holmes; *
Sample chapter: A Taste of Java's I/O Package: Streams, Files, and So Much More
* The Jini(TM) Specification, 2nd Edition; Ken Arnold, Jim Waldo and the rest of the Jini technology team. Part of the official Jini Technology Series, published by Addison Wesley.

* "Rogue: Where It has Been, Why It Was There, And Why It Shouldn't Have Been There In The First Place"; USENIX Conference Proceedings; Boston, July 1982, p. 139 ff; Ken C.R.C. Arnold, Michael C. Toy

References

External links

Ken Arnold's (low volume) Artima log

Ken Arnold's (low volume) java.net blog

curses
*
Napkin Look and Feel for Swing
— a GUI that gives the look and feel of a sketch on a napkin {{DEFAULTSORT:Arnold, Ken 1958 births Living people UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni American video game designers American video game programmers Place of birth missing (living people) BSD people Hewlett-Packard people Sun Microsystems people

At Berkeley

Selected bibliography

See also

References

External links