人物经历

他还是两本经典，The Unix Programming Environment 和 The Practice of Programming 的作者之一。如果初学者想在编程方面精益求精，实在该好好读读这两本书。它们都有中文版的说。罗伯伯还写出了Unix下第一个基于位图的窗口系统，并且是著名的blit 终端的作者。当然了，罗伯伯还是号称锐意革新的操作系统，Plan9，的主要作者。可惜的是，Plan9并没有引起多少人的注意。

罗伯伯一怒之下，写出了振聋发聩的雄文 Systems Software Research is Irrelevant，痛斥当下系统开发的不思进取，固步自封的弊病。虽然这篇文章是罗伯伯含忿出手，颇有偏激之词，但确实道出了系统开发的无奈：开发周期越来越长，代价越来越大，用户被统一到少数几个系统上，结果越来越多的活动是测量和修补，而真正的革新越来越少。

就在罗伯伯郁闷之极的时候，google登门求贤来了。如果说现在还有一家大众公司在不遗余力地把系统开发推向极致的话，也就是google了。随便看看google的成果就知道了。具有超强容错和负载平衡能力的分布式文件系统GFS (现在能够用100,000台廉价PC搭起一个巨型分布系统，并且高效便宜地进行管理的系统也不多哈)，大规模机器学习系统(拼写检查，广告匹配，拼音搜寻。。。哪个都很牛的说)，更不用说处理海量并行计算的各式google服务了。Rob在System Software Research is Irrelevant里萧瑟地说现在没有人再关心系统研究的前沿成果了。想不到他错了，因为google关心。google网络了大批功成总是试图吸取系统研究的最新成果。想必Rob Pike在google很幸福。愿他做出更棒的系统。

目录· 个人简介 · 精彩引言 · 《程序设计实践》中文版本 · 我是笨人——读Rob Pike的《Notes on C Programming 》 · 参考文献 [显示部分][显示全部]

Rob Pike 何许人也?作家?不错,Rob 和贝尔实验室的Kernighan 合作出版了《Unix 编程环境》(The Unix Programming Environment)和《程序设计实践》(The Practice ofProgramming)。这两本书都有中文译本,为初学者研习和提高编程技术提供了很好的方法和理念。天文学家?这是 Rob 的副业。牛烘烘的他曾在70年代得到加拿大皇家天文协会多伦多中心的资助,对光污染进行研究,写有相关论文若干篇。更厉害的是,他设计的伽马望远镜差一点被用在航天飞机上(如果他没有开玩笑的话)。Rob Pike

Robert C. Pike (born 1956) is a software engineer and author. He is best known for his work at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team and was involved in the creation of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Inferno operating systems, as well as the Limbo programming language.

He also co-developed the Blit graphical terminal for Unix; before that he wrote the first window system for Unix in 1981. Pike was the applicant for AT&T patent number 4555775 or " backing store patent" that is part of the X graphic system protocol. Pike is a prominent proponent of software patents. [1]

Over the years Pike has written many text editors; sam and acme are the most well known and are still in active use and development.

Pike, with Brian Kernighan, 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. Pike also developed lesser systems such as the vismon program for displaying images of faces of email authors.

Pike also appeared once on The Late Show with David Letterman, as a technical assistant to the comedy duo Penn and Teller.

As a joke Pike claimed to have won the 1980 Olympic silver medal in Archery; however, Canada boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics.

Pike, a Canadian citizen, is married to Renée French, and currently works for Google.

精彩引言

"Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." - circa 1991 [1]Robert C. Pike

"Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing." - [2] "There's no such thing as a simple cache bug." [3]

"Caches aren't architecture, they're just optimization." [4]

"Sockets are the X windows of IO interfaces." [5]

"Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks." - on the X Window System [6]