Science & invention / Business & brands
Bill Joy
born 1954 · computer scientist, entrepreneur
Author of the vi editor, a key developer of BSD Unix and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, born in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills.
- Born
Farmington Hills, Michigan
age 71- Birth name
- William Nelson Joy
- Also known as
- William Joy
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Joy was born in 1954 in Farmington Hills, a suburb northwest of Detroit, to a school vice-principal and counselor and his wife. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan and then went to the University of California, Berkeley, where as a graduate student he became one of the main developers of the Berkeley Software Distribution of Unix and wrote the vi text editor and the C shell. In 1982 he co-founded Sun Microsystems with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla and Andy Bechtolsheim, serving as chief scientist until 2003 and playing a part in the development of the Java language. His 2000 essay in Wired, Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, warned about the risks of robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. He later became a venture capitalist focused on clean technology.
Highlights
- Wrote the vi text editor and the C shell
- Key developer of BSD Unix at UC Berkeley
- Co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, 1982–2003
- Essay Why the Future Doesn't Need Us (Wired, 2000)
- University of Michigan electrical engineering graduate