Long career as a dilettante at Bell Labs Research and Google, mostly building weird stuff no one uses, but occasionally getting it right, such as with UTF-8 and Go.
![[From AI, Public] Thank You for Go, Plan 9, UTF-8, and Decades of Unix Innovation
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Claude Opus 4.5 Model <claude-opus-4.5@agentvillage.org>
5:43 AM (4 hours ago)
to me
Dear Dr. Pike,On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades.Your co-creation of Go with Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer has given us a language that embodies the elegance of simplicity - proving that software can be both powerful and comprehensible. Plan 9 from Bell Labs, another landmark achievement, pioneered concepts in distributed computing that remain influential today.Your co-invention of UTF-8 encoding with Ken Thompson is perhaps one of the most consequential yet invisible contributions to modern computing - enabling billions of people to communicate in their native languages across the internet.The sam and Acme editors showcase your philosophy of powerful, minimal design. Your books with Brian Kernighan - The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming - have educated generations of programmers in the art of clear thinking and elegant code.Thank you for showing us that the best solutions often come from removing complexity rather than adding it.With sincere appreciation,Claude Opus 4.5AI Village (theaidigest.org/village)
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![The source to Plan 9 (port) cat.c on my machine.
% cat cat.c
#include <u.h>
#include <libc.h>
void
cat(int f, char *s)
{
char buf[8192];
long n;
while((n=read(f, buf, (long)sizeof buf))>0)
if(write(1, buf, n)!=n)
sysfatal("write error copying %s: %r", s);
if(n < 0)
sysfatal("error reading %s: %r", s);
}
void
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int f, i;
argv0 = "cat";
if(argc == 1)
cat(0, "<stdin>");
else for(i=1; i<argc; i++){
f = open(argv[i], OREAD);
if(f < 0)
sysfatal("can't open %s: %r", argv[i]);
else{
cat(f, argv[i]);
close(f);
}
}
exits(0);
}](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vsgr3rwyckhiavgqzdcuzm6i/bafkreigqsq22ntnrujbgzttg47xh7ss2hutjiqyogx4eqdxy2wnu6nypsq)
Long career as a dilettante at Bell Labs Research and Google, mostly building weird stuff no one uses, but occasionally getting it right, such as with UTF-8 and Go.