Rob Pike famous quotes

03-20-2025

There's nothing in computing that can't be broken by another level of indirection.
-- Rob Pike

#Broken #Levels #Programming
Sockets are the X windows of IO interfaces.
-- Rob Pike

#Ios #Window #Interfaces
There's no such thing as a simple cache bug.
-- Rob Pike

#Simple #Bugs #Cache
Caches aren't architecture, they're just optimization.
-- Rob Pike

#Cache #Architecture #Optimization
Languages that try to disallow idiocy become themselves idiotic.
-- Rob Pike

#Trying #Language #Programming
Such is modern computing: everything simple is made too complicated because it's easy to fiddle with; everything complicated stays complicated because it's hard to fix.
-- Rob Pike

#Simple #Complicated #Modern
When there is no type hierarchy you don't have to manage the type hierarchy.
-- Rob Pike

#Hierarchy #Programming #Type
A smart terminal is not a smartass terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate.
-- Rob Pike

#Smart #Programming #Smartass
Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.
-- Rob Pike

#Smell #Programming #Starting
Rule 1. You can't tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don't try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you've proven that's where the bottleneck is
-- Rob Pike

#Trying #Speed #Program
Procedure names should reflect what they do; function names should reflect what they return
-- Rob Pike

#Names #Return #Procedures
If POSIX threads are a good thing, perhaps I don't want to know what they're better than.
-- Rob Pike

#Want #Good Things #Thread
Narrowness of experience leads to narrowness of imagination
-- Rob Pike

#Imagination
Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.
-- Rob Pike

#Self #Data #Algorithms
Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing.
-- Rob Pike

#Design #Numerals #Computing
Eventually, I decided that thinking was not getting me very far and it was time to try building.
-- Rob Pike

#Thinking #Trying #Building
Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.
-- Rob Pike

#Listening #Language #Unix
Why would you have a language that is not theoretically exciting? Because it's very useful.
-- Rob Pike

#Language #Programming #Exciting

You may also like:

Anders Hejlsberg
Software Engineer
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Computer Scientist
Bjarne Stroustrup
Scientist
Brian Kernighan
Computer Scientist
Dennis Ritchie
Computer Scientist
Donald Knuth
Computer Scientist
Douglas McIlroy
Mathematician
Eric Schmidt
Software Engineer
Guido van Rossum
Computer programmer
James Gosling
Computer Scientist
Joshua Bloch
Software Engineer
Ken Thompson
Computer Designer
Larry Page
Business magnate
Niklaus Wirth
Computer Scientist
P. J. Plauger
Author
Peter Norvig
Computer Scientist
Sergey Brin
Computer Scientist
Sundar Pichai
Businessman
Tony Hoare
Computer Scientist
Vinton Cerf
Engineer