Rob Pike Quotes

Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system.

The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.

I wanted to have virtual memory, at least as it's coupled with file systems.

We think of enterprise architecture as the process we use for fully describing and mapping business functionality and business requirements and relating them to information systems requirements.

Prune - prune businesses, products, activities, people. Do it annually.

The American attitude towards efficiency and execution should always underlie architecture.

No one wants one language. There are applications when it's appropriate to write something in C rather than in Java. If you want to write something where performance is much more important than extensibility, then you might want to choose C rather than Java.

The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.

UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.

Physicists analyze systems. Web scientists, however, can create the systems.

Technologists come at a problem from the point of view that the system is working a certain way, and if I engage in that system and actually change the rules of the system, I can make it work a different way.

Personally, I tend to be more interested in security and performance-related issues than other things.

The point is that you want to have a system that is responsive.

There is still refinement needed - we are working on being able to do the same things at lower light levels and with a larger field of view.

Even though most people won't be directly involved with programming, everyone is affected by computers, so an educated person should have a good understanding of how computer hardware, software, and networks operate.

In my daily work, I work on very large, complex, distributed systems built out of many Python modules and packages. The focus is very similar to what you find, for example, in Java and, in general, in systems programming languages.

Realize you won't master data structures until you are working on a real-world problem and discover that a hash is the solution to your performance woes.

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

I very seldom worry about other systems. I concentrate pretty fully on just making Linux the best I can.

The speed at which modern CPUs perform computations still blows my mind daily.

It's not about working harder; it's about working the system.

... balancing competing goals of simplicity, efficiency and equity.

This is the system that we have. I didn’t make the system. This is the system that we have.

People crave predictability, and when you design and use systems, you give people predictability. More importantly, when you build systems, they can help you orchestrate, and orchestration helps you create the habits that continuously improve the systems!

Every problem is super-interesting and has its own nuances, and you solve it today, but you try to solve it with an architecture. You build a machine to solve the problems that are like it later. And then you move on to the next.