Rob Pike
Canadian programmer who co-created the Go language and UTF-8
- Works listed
- 2
- Book, Programming language
- Honours
- 1
- Most recent 2026
- Profile views
- 6
- 0 followers
Rob Pike is a Canadian programmer who worked on Unix and the Plan 9 operating system at Bell Labs, co-designed the UTF-8 text encoding with Ken Thompson and co-created the Go programming language at Google.
Biography
Bell Labs
Pike studied at the University of Toronto and joined Bell Labs in 1980. He worked on Unix, created the Blit graphical terminal with Bart Locanthi and wrote the sam and acme text editors.
Plan 9 and UTF-8
He was a lead developer of Plan 9 from Bell Labs, a successor to Unix. In September 1992, needing a way to encode all the world’s characters, he and Ken Thompson designed UTF-8 over dinner. It is now used by almost all web pages.
Go
Joining Google in 2002, he co-designed Go with Thompson and Robert Griesemer from 2007; it was released in 2009. Go is simple and fast and is used for cloud software such as Docker and Kubernetes.
Books
With Brian Kernighan he wrote The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming.
Timeline
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1980
Joins Bell Labs
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1982
Blit terminal
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1984
The Unix Programming Environment
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1992
Designs UTF-8 with Ken Thompson
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1992
Plan 9 first edition
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2002
Joins Google
-
2009
Go released
Notable works
-
1984
The Unix Programming Environment Book
With Brian Kernighan.
-
2009
Go Programming language
With Thompson and Griesemer.
Awards and honours
-
USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award
2026
Did you know?
-
1
He co-wrote two classic programming books with Brian Kernighan.
-
2
UTF-8 was designed on a placemat in a New Jersey diner.
-
3
Go’s mascot, the gopher, was drawn by his wife Renée French.
Connections
Frequently asked
Who is Rob Pike?
Rob Pike is a Canadian programmer who worked on Unix and the Plan 9 operating system at Bell Labs, co-designed the UTF-8 text encoding with Ken Thompson and co-created the Go programming language at Google.
Where is Rob Pike from?
Rob Pike was born in Canada.
What is Rob Pike known for?
Rob Pike is best known for Co-creating Go (2009) and UTF-8 (1992); Plan 9; The Unix Programming Environment.
What awards has Rob Pike received?
Notable honours include USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award (2026).
References
- Rob Pike — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Official website. herpolhode.com. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Rob Pike (Q517764) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Rob Pike”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more
External links
About this profile
- Researched by the TrackFame editorial team; reviewed by Sanjay Sokal under our editorial policy
- First published 4 November 2026
- Last updated
Cite this page
“Rob Pike.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/rob-pike
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