1. Philosophy: Philosophy Matters
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
Usenet signature, November 1987 —Henry Spencer
1.1 Culture? What Culture?
This is a book about Unix programming, but in it we’re going to toss around the words ’culture’, ’art’, and ’philosophy’ a lot. If you are not a programmer, or you are a programmer who has had little contact with the Unix world, this may seem strange. But Unix has a culture; it has a distinctive art of programming; and it carries with it a powerful design philosophy. Understanding these traditions will help you build better software, even if you’re developing for a non-Unix platform.
Every branch of engineering and design has technical cultures. In most kinds of ...
Get The Art of UNIX Programming now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
