What Does "Не тормозит" Mean?

We often get this question when people see vintage (limited production) ClickHouse t-shirts. They have the words "ClickHouse не тормозит" written in big bold text on the front.

Before ClickHouse became open-source, it was developed as an in-house storage system by a large European IT company, Yandex. That’s why it initially got its slogan in Cyrillic, which is "не тормозит" (pronounced as "ne tormozit"). After the open-source release, we first produced some of those t-shirts for local events, and it was a no-brainer to use the slogan as-is.

A second batch of these t-shirts was supposed to be given away at international events, and we tried to make an English version of the slogan. Unfortunately, we just couldn't come up with a punchy equivalent in English. The original phrase is elegant in its expression while being succinct, and restrictions on space on the t-shirt meant that we failed to come up with a good enough translation as most options appeared to be either too long or inaccurate. We decided to keep the slogan even on t-shirts produced for international events. It appeared to be a great decision because people all over the world were positively surprised and curious when they saw it.

So, what does it mean? Here are some ways to translate "не тормозит":

• If you translate it literally, it sounds something like "ClickHouse does not press the brake pedal".
• Shorter, but less precise translations might be "ClickHouse is not slow", "ClickHouse does not lag" or just "ClickHouse is fast".

If you haven’t seen one of those t-shirts in person, you can check them out online in many ClickHouse-related videos. For example, this one:

P.S. These t-shirts are not for sale, they were given away for free at some ClickHouse Meetups, usually as a gift for best questions or other forms of active participation. Now, these t-shirts are no longer produced, and they have become highly valued collector's items.