Andrew S. Tanenbaum Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

XML combines the efficiency of text files with the readability of binary files

I have a mouse, but don't have a mouse driver for MINIX and have never felt the need to write one. Typing "rm x y z" is a lot faster than clicking five times and then having to convince the system that you really, truly, mean it and this is not a mistake and that you are consenting adult over 18 and that you completely understand the consequences and you still want to do it.

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.

A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack.

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

The amount of improvement that has occurred in computer technology in the past half century is truly staggering and unprecedented in other industries. ... If cars had improved at this rate in the same time period, a Rolls Royce would now cost 10 dollars and get a billion miles per gallon. (Unfortunately, it would probably also have a 200-page manual telling how to open the door.)

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

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.