Rob Pike
Co-creator of the Go programming language, of UTF-8 and of the Plan 9 operating system; formerly of Bell Labs.
Rob Pike did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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A small software package with good intentions can accumulate so many dependents and dependencies that it becomes a vector for bloat and malfeasance.
a small package with good intentions can accumulate both a large set of dependents and a large set of dependencies, turning it into a vector for bloat and malfeasance.
commandcenter.blogspot.comSaid 13 Feb 2025This on korrents
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Engineers commonly confuse a solution with the problem it is meant to solve.
It's a mistake common to engineers everywhere to confuse the solution and the problem like this.
commandcenter.blogspot.comSaid 4 Jan 2024This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
16 October
11 October
13 March
14 September 2025
13 February 2025
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Their words
a small package with good intentions can accumulate both a large set of dependents and a large set of dependencies, turning it into a vector for bloat and malfeasance.
4 January 2024
From one piece What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong 3 beliefs · commandcenter.blogspot.com
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Their words
It's important, though, whatever concurrency model you provide, to do it exactly once, because an environment providing multiple concurrency implementations can be problematic.
What We Got Right, What We Got Wrongcommandcenter.blogspot.com
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Their words
Concurrent code only goes faster when parallelized if the underlying problem is intrinsically parallel, like serving HTTP requests.
What We Got Right, What We Got Wrongcommandcenter.blogspot.com
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Their words
It's a mistake common to engineers everywhere to confuse the solution and the problem like this.
What We Got Right, What We Got Wrongcommandcenter.blogspot.com
6 December 2023
From one piece Simplicity 3 beliefs · commandcenter.blogspot.com
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Their words
Because of the multiplicative effects of complexity, getting 2% performance improvement by adding 2% complexity-or 1% or maybe even .1%-isn't worth it.
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korrents.com
Complex systems are never fast, because they have too many parts with poorly understood interactions to be optimized.Their words
But complex systems are NEVER fast-they have more pieces and their interactions are too poorly understood to make them fast. Complexity generates inefficiency.
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Their words
Complexity is multiplicative. In a system, like Google, that is assembled from components, every time you make one part more complex, some of the added complexity is reflected in the other components.
9 November 2023
1 October 2023
5 July 2023
3 April 2023
13 January 2023
6 September 2022
23 August 2022
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Their words
what we learn through our education has always been filtered by those who came after the events.
My black body story (it's physics).commandcenter.blogspot.com
21 September 2021
3 March 2021
10 January 2020
10 January 2017
2 December 2015
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 8 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
A small software package with good intentions can accumulate so many dependents and dependencies that it becomes a vector for bloat and malfeasance.
a small package with good intentions can accumulate both a large set of dependents and a large set of dependencies, turning it into a vector for bloat and malfeasance.
command center Said 13 Feb 2025
Engineers commonly confuse a solution with the problem it is meant to solve.
It's a mistake common to engineers everywhere to confuse the solution and the problem like this.
What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong Said 4 Jan 2024
Concurrent code only becomes faster from parallelization when the underlying problem is itself intrinsically parallel.
Concurrent code only goes faster when parallelized if the underlying problem is intrinsically parallel, like serving HTTP requests.
What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong Said 4 Jan 2024
Show 5 more
A programming environment should provide exactly one concurrency model, since offering multiple concurrency implementations at once causes problems.
It's important, though, whatever concurrency model you provide, to do it exactly once, because an environment providing multiple concurrency implementations can be problematic.
What We Got Right, What We Got Wrong Said 4 Jan 2024
In a system built from interacting components, complexity is multiplicative: making one part more complex adds complexity elsewhere too.
Complexity is multiplicative. In a system, like Google, that is assembled from components, every time you make one part more complex, some of the added complexity is reflected in the other components.
Simplicity Said 6 Dec 2023
Complex systems are never fast, because they have too many parts with poorly understood interactions to be optimized.
But complex systems are NEVER fast-they have more pieces and their interactions are too poorly understood to make them fast. Complexity generates inefficiency.
Simplicity Said 6 Dec 2023
A small performance gain is not worth the complexity added to achieve it, since complexity's costs compound rather than add.
Because of the multiplicative effects of complexity, getting 2% performance improvement by adding 2% complexity-or 1% or maybe even .1%-isn't worth it.
Simplicity Said 6 Dec 2023
Education presents historical discoveries through the hindsight of later generations rather than as they originally happened.
what we learn through our education has always been filtered by those who came after the events.
My black body story (it's physics). Said 23 Aug 2022
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 4 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Loved Acme
I mostly live inside acme, an editor-shell-IDE-oddball I wrote a while ago that has a different worldview and a very different user interface but that, when used well, is powerful and expressive.
usesthis.com 23 Oct 2012
their own
Uses plan9port
However, two things always come along: The Go installation of course, and Plan 9 from User space, also known as plan9port, Russ Cox’s port of the Plan 9 user experience (if not world view) to Unix.
usesthis.com 23 Oct 2012
Uses Go
However, two things always come along: The Go installation of course, and Plan 9 from User space, also known as plan9port, Russ Cox’s port of the Plan 9 user experience (if not world view) to Unix.
usesthis.com 23 Oct 2012
their own
Show 1 more
Loved MacBook Air (11-inch)
my two-year-old 11" MacBook Air is the only piece of computing hardware to make me happy since I can’t remember when. For what it does, as opposed to what my dream setup would be, it’s fast and light and smooth and comfortable.
usesthis.com 23 Oct 2012
Where they publish
Blog commandcenter.blogspot.com His blog, Command Center.
Open commandcenter.blogspot.com
Link verified 5 Sept 2026.
GitHub robpike His GitHub account, home of ivy and his Go work.
Recent
- ivy — ivy, an APL-like calculator 16 Oct 2026
- lisp — Toy Lisp 1.5 interpreter 11 Oct 2026
- translate — Translate is a command-line interface to the Google translate API. 13 Mar 2026
Show 17 more
- unicode — Unicode is a command-line utility for browsing the Unicode database. 14 Sept 2025
- typo — Typo is a Go version of the old Unix typo command. 9 Nov 2023
- now — Convenient global date printer 1 Oct 2023
- nihongo 5 Jul 2023
- einstein 3 Apr 2023
- filter — Simple apply/filter/reduce package. 13 Jan 2023
- strings — Strings is a custom, Unicode-competent version of the BSD strings utility. 6 Sept 2022
- expr — A simple evaluator for arithmetic integer expressions. 21 Sept 2021
- script — Command to supervise interactive execution of another command, such as the shell. 3 Mar 2021
- sid — Program to print sidereal time 10 Jan 2020
- tab — Tab: reformat tab-delimited columnar input 10 Jan 2017
- freq — Command to show character (Unicode code point) frequency. 2 Dec 2015
- scrub 6 Sept 2015
- doc — Go document helper 20 Jul 2015
- kata — Kata is a command to transliterate ASCII to katakana. 17 Jul 2015
- hira — Hira is a command to transliterate ASCII to Hiragana. 17 Jul 2015
- kana — Kana is a command to transliterate hiragana and katakana to ASCII. 17 Jul 2015
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.