Rob Pike
{{short description|Computer programmer and co-creator of Go}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Rob Pike
| image = Rob-pike-oscon.jpg
| alt =
| caption = Rob Pike at OSCON 2010
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1956}}
| birth_place =
| death_date =
| death_place =
| nationality = Canadian
| other_names =
| known_for = Plan 9, UTF-8, Go
| occupation = Software engineer
| spouse = Renée French
| alma_mater = {{plainlist|
- University of Toronto {{small|(BS)}}
- California Institute of Technology}}
| website = {{URL|http://herpolhode.com/rob/}}
}}
Robert Pike (born 1956) is a Canadian programmer and author.
He is best known for his work on the Go programming language while working at Google
{{cite web |title="The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got" with Rob Pike |url=https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206 |website=InformIT |publisher=Pearson Education |access-date=15 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230922092535/https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206 |archive-date=22 Sep 2023 |date=Aug 15, 2012 |url-status=live}}
{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1145/3488716| issn = 0001-0782| volume = 65| issue = 5| pages = 70–78| last1 = Cox| first1 = Russ| last2 = Griesemer| first2 = Robert| last3 = Pike| first3 = Rob| last4 = Taylor| first4 = Ian Lance| last5 = Thompson| first5 = Ken| title = The Go programming language and environment| journal = Communications of the ACM| date = 2022-04-01| s2cid = 248385361| doi-access = free}}
and the Plan 9 operating system while working at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team.
Pike wrote the first window system for Unix in 1981.{{cite web |last1=Pike |first1=Rob |author1-link=Rob Pike |title=Rob Pike |url=https://9p.io/who/rob/index.html |website=9p.io |publisher=Alcatel-Lucent |access-date=15 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230129180547/https://9p.io/who/rob/index.html |archive-date=29 Jan 2023 |url-status=live}}{{non-primary source needed|date=January 2024}} He is the sole inventor named in the US patent for overlapping windows on a computer display.{{cite web|url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US4555775A/en|title=Dynamic generation and overlaying of graphic windows for multiple active program storage areas|access-date=April 1, 2020}}
With Brian Kernighan, he is the co-author of The Practice of Programming and The Unix Programming Environment. With Ken Thompson, he is the co-creator of UTF-8 character encoding.
Additional works
While at Bell Labs, Pike was also involved in the creation of the
Blit graphical terminal for Unix,{{cite journal |last1=Pike |first1=Rob |title=The UNIX System : The Blit: A Multiplexed Graphics Terminal |journal=AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal |date=October 1984 |volume=63 |issue=8 |doi=10.1002/j.1538-7305.1984.tb00056.x |url=https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/blit/blit.pdf |access-date=7 January 2024 |at=15}}
the Inferno operating system, and the Limbo programming language.
Pike also developed lesser systems such as the Newsqueak concurrent programming language{{cite journal |first1=Rob |last1=Pike |year=1990 |title=The Implementation of Newsqueak |journal=Software: Practice and Experience |volume=20 |number=7 |pages=649–659 |doi=10.1002/spe.4380200703 |url=http://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/250RTS/archive/rob-pike/impl-new-TR.pdf}} and the vismon program for displaying faces of email authors.{{cite conference |last1=Pike |first1=Rob |last2=Presotto |first2=Dave Lee |title=Face the Nation |conference=USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings |location=Portland, OR, USA |date=June 1985}}
Over the years, Pike has written many text editors; sam{{cite tech report |first1=M. D. |last1=McIlroy |author-link1=Doug McIlroy |year=1987 |url=http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf |title=A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 |series=CSTR |number=139 |institution=Bell Labs}} and acme are the most well known.{{cn|date=January 2024}}
Pike started working at Google in 2002.
While there, he was also involved in the creation of the programming language Sawzall.
{{cite journal
|first1=Rob
|last1=Pike
|first2=Sean
|last2=Dorward
|first3=Robert
|last3=Griesemer
|first4=Sean
|last4=Quinlan
|journal=Scientific Programming
|volume=13
|issue=4
|pages=227–298
|date=2005-01-01
|url=http://research.google.com/archive/sawzall.html
|title=Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall
|doi=10.1155/2005/962135
|doi-access=free
}}
Pike appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, as a technical assistant to the comedy duo Penn & Teller.{{non-primary source needed|date=January 2024}}
Personal life
Pike is married to author and illustrator Renée French; the couple live both in the US and Australia.
{{cite web |date=27 July 2015 |title=Renee French – A River Runs Through It – Artist Interview |url=https://wowxwow.com/artist-interview/renee-french-ai |website=WOW x WOW}}
See also
- The plumber – the interprocess communications mechanism used in Plan 9 and Inferno
- Mark V. Shaney – an artificial Usenet poster designed by Pike
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{Commons category}}
{{Wikiquote}}
- [http://herpolhode.com/rob/ugly.pdf The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy] – Slides of his presentation at the commemoration of 1000000000 seconds of the Unix clock. ([http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/good_bad_ugly/slides.pdf Archive on cat-v.org])
- [http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/ Systems Software Research is Irrelevant] (a.k.a. utah2000); [http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf slides]; [http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.ps ps file]
- [http://herpolhode.com/rob/ Pike's personal homepage]
- [http://research.google.com/people/r/ Pike's Google homepage] ({{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080212211032/http://research.google.com/people/r/ |date=2008-02-12 }})
- {{github|robpike|Rob Pike}}
{{Rob Pike navbox}}
{{Authority control}}
{{Use Canadian English|date=April 2020}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pike, Rob}}
Category:Canadian computer scientists
Category:Canadian technology writers
Category:Inferno (operating system) people