Tanenbaum Quotes

#1. Microkernels are not a pipe dream. They represent proven technology.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#2. I couldn't stand being identified by my sexuality, I retaliated by insisting that people regard me for my intellectual worth. My intellect became a form of damage control.

Leora Tanenbaum

#3. I really am not angry with Linus. Honest. He's not angry with me either.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#4. UNIX does not allow path names to be prefixed by a drive name or number; that would be precisely the kind of device dependence that operating systems ought to eliminate.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#5. What drives abortion bans and restrictions? The belief that women who have sex for pleasure rather than procreation are sluts.

Leora Tanenbaum

#6. A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#7. A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#8. I had never engaged in remote multishrink psychoanalysis on this scale before, so it was a fascinating experience.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#9. I can type faster than I can point. And my mother told me that pointing
is impolite.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#10. A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#11. Human beings are fallible, frightened and prone to corruption.

Robert K. Tanenbaum

#12. Unfortunately, the current generation of mail programs do not have checkers to see if the sender knows what he is talking about.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#13. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#14. However, as every parent of a small child knows, converting a large object into small fragments is considerably easier than the reverse process.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#15. but there it was. Home was prison was home.

Robert K. Tanenbaum

#16. ...language is sacred. It has glory, even in ordinary speech. The way most people use it, it's like a winged horse pulling a junk wagon.

Robert K. Tanenbaum

#17. One of the most corrosive aspects of the criminal justice system is its toleration of the insanity defense...Legitimate in some few cases, the insanity defense has been rendered farcical through its manipulation by so-called experts.

Robert K. Tanenbaum

#18. XML combines the efficiency of text files with the readability of binary files

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#19. If anyone had realized that within 10 years this tiny system that was picked up almost by accident was going to be controlling 50 million computers, considerably more thought might have gone into it.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#20. A refund for defective software might be nice, except it would bankrupt the entire software industry in the first year.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#21. The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#22. Writing a portable OS is not much harder than a nonportable one, and all systems should be written with portability in mind these days.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#23. While most people can talk rationally about kernel design and portability, the issue of free-ness is 100% emotional.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#24. They wish to make a medical thing of evil. Madness is also such a useful metaphor, for that which we would rather not face...

Robert K. Tanenbaum

#25. But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a modern "free" OS look around for a microkernel-based, portable OS, like maybe GNU or something like that.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#26. Fight Features. ... The only way to make software secure, reliable, and fast is to make it small.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#27. With current technology it is possible to put four floppy disk drives in a personal computer. It is just that doing so would be pointless.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#28. When my reputation was at its height, classmates insulted me right to my face as I walked down the hall. When a teacher called on me, boys snickered and girls rolled their eyes. My body and face burned. I felt mortified. I contemplated suicide.

Leora Tanenbaum

#29. Linux is a leprosy; ... This statement is not grammatically or factually correct.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

#30. The only real argument for monolithic systems was performance, and there is now enough evidence showing that microkernel systems can be just as fast as monolithic systems.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum