ugh.book

174 Programming

However, the Unix kernels, shell, and C language taken together

address some large-scale issues that are not handled well (or are

often not even addressed) in those languages and environments.

Examples of such large-scale issues are certain aspects of memory

management and locality (through process creation and exit), persis-

tency (using files as data structures), parallelism (by means of pipes,

processes, and IPC), protection and recovery (through separate

address spaces), and human editable data representations (text).

From a practical point of view, these are handled quite well in the

Unix environment.

Thomas Breuel credits Unix with one approach to solving the complicated

problems of computer science. Fortunately, this is not the approach that

other sciences have used for solving problems posed by the human condi-

tion.

Date: Tue, 12 Nov 91 11:36:04 -0500

From: [email protected]

To: UNIX-HATERS

Subject: Random Unix similes

Treating memory management through process creation and exit is

like medicine treating illness through living and dying, i.e., it is

ignoring the problem.

Having Unix files (i.e., the Bag O’ Bytes) be your sole interface to

persistency is like throwing everything you own into your closet and

hoping that you can find what you want when you need it (which,

unfortunately, is what I do).

Parallelism through pipes, processes, and IPC? Unix process over-

head is so high that this is not a significant source of parallelism. It is

like an employer solving a personnel shortage by asking his employ-

ees to have more children.

Yep, Unix can sure handle text. It can also handle text. Oh, by the

way, did I mention that Unix is good at handling text?

—Mark