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

computer programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

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

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

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

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

) distribution of

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser 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, and ot ...

, for his books and articles about C and

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

(e.g. his 1980s–1990s ''

Unix Review ''UNIX Review'' was an American magazine covering technical aspects of the UNIX operating system and C programming. Recognized for its in-depth technical analysis, the journal also reported on industry confabs and included some lighter fare. Histo ...

'' column, "''The C Advisor''"), and his high-profile work on the

Java platform Java is a set of computer software and specifications developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems, which was later acquired by the Oracle Corporation, that provides a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cro ...

At Berkeley

Arnold attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, after having worked at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

computer labs for a year, receiving his

A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

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

in 1985. At Berkeley, he was president of the Berkeley Computer Club and of the Computer Science Undergraduates Association, and made many contributions to the 2BSD and 4BSD

Berkeley Unix The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

distributions, including: *

curses A curse (also called an imprecation, malediction, execration, malison, anathema, or commination) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular ...

and

termcap Termcap (''terminal capability'') is a software library and database used on Unix-like computers. It enables programs to use display computer terminals in a device-independent manner, which greatly simplifies the process of writing portable text ...

: 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 at ...

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

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

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 ...

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

role-playing video game A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...

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-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded a ...

'' 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 Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player characte ...

" games. *

fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...

: 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 In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only character (computing), characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (Floating point numbers, floating-point numb ...

file format A file format is a 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 or free. Some file formats ...

that was philosophically aligned with Unix and thus became widely used both for other fortune programs as well as non-fortune purposes.

Selected bibliography

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

James Gosling James Gosling (born May 19, 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language. Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for the conceptio ...

, 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 computer programmers 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