Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 7, 2026

Rob Pike

Robert Pike is a Canadian programmer and author. He is best known for his work on the Go programming language while working at Google and the Plan 9 operating system while working at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team.

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Jun 7, 2026
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Rob Pike
Rob Pike at OSCON 2010
Born1956 (age 69–70)
Alma mater
OccupationSoftware engineer
Known forPlan 9, UTF-8, Go
SpouseRenée French
Websiteherpolhode.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 Google12 and the Plan 9 operating system while working at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team.1

Pike wrote the first window system for Unix in 1981.3 He is the sole inventor named in a US patent for overlapping windows on a computer display.4

With Brian Kernighan, he is the co-author of The Practice of Programming and The Unix Programming Environment.1 With Ken Thompson, he is the co-creator of UTF-8 character encoding.1

Additional works

While at Bell Labs, Pike was also involved in the creation of the Blit graphical terminal for Unix,5 the Inferno operating system, and the Limbo programming language.1 Pike also developed lesser systems such as the Newsqueak concurrent programming language6 and the vismon program for displaying faces of email authors.7

Over the years, Pike has written many text editors; sam8 and acme are the most well known.

Pike started working at Google in 2002.1 While there, he was also involved in the creation of the programming language Sawzall.9

Pike appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, as a technical assistant to the comedy duo Penn & Teller.10

Personal life

Pike is married to author and illustrator Renée French; the couple live both in the US and Australia.11

See also

See also

References

References

  1. ""The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got" with Rob Pike". InformIT. Pearson Education. Aug 15, 2012. Archived from the original on 22 Sep 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
  2. Cox, Russ; Griesemer, Robert; Pike, Rob; Taylor, Ian Lance; Thompson, Ken (2022-04-01). "The Go programming language and environment". Communications of the ACM. 65 (5): 70–78. doi:10.1145/3488716. ISSN 0001-0782. S2CID 248385361.
  3. Pike, Rob. "Rob Pike". 9p.io. Alcatel-Lucent. Archived from the original on 29 Jan 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
  4. "Dynamic generation and overlaying of graphic windows for multiple active program storage areas". Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  5. Pike, Rob (October 1984). "The UNIX System : The Blit: A Multiplexed Graphics Terminal" (PDF). AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal. 63 (8). 15. Bibcode:1984BSTJ...63.1607P. doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1984.tb00056.x. Retrieved 7 January 2024.
  6. Pike, Rob (1990). "The Implementation of Newsqueak" (PDF). Software: Practice and Experience. 20 (7): 649–659. doi:10.1002/spe.4380200703.
  7. Pike, Rob; Presotto, Dave Lee (June 1985). Face the Nation. USENIX Summer Conference Proceedings. Portland, OR, USA.
  8. McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmer's Manual, 1971–1986 (PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. 139.
  9. Pike, Rob; Dorward, Sean; Griesemer, Robert; Quinlan, Sean (2005-01-01). "Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall". Scientific Programming. 13 (4): 227–298. doi:10.1155/2005/962135.
  10. Pike (homepage): "My Letterman appearance with Penn & Teller in May, 1990." (Contains link to video.)
  11. "Renee French – A River Runs Through It – Artist Interview". WOW x WOW. 27 July 2015.
External links