8 Unix
Perhaps the most startling fact about RIP is that it was built and
widely distributed with no formal standard. Most implementations
have been derived from the Berkeley code, with interoperability lim-
ited by the programmer’s understanding of undocumented details
and subtleties. As new versions appear, more problems arise.Like a classics radio station whose play list spans decades, Unix simulta-
neously exhibits its mixed and dated heritage. There’s Clash-era graphics
interfaces; Beatles-era two-letter command names; and systems programs
(for example, ps) whose terse and obscure output was designed for slow
teletypes; Bing Crosby-era command editing (# and @ are still the default
line editing commands), and Scott Joplin-era core dumps.Others have noticed that Unix is evolutionarily superior to its competition,
rather than technically superior. Richard P. Gabriel, in his essay “The Rise
of Worse-is-Better,” expounds on this theme (see Appendix A). His thesis
is that the Unix design philosophy requires that all design decisions err on
the side of implementation simplicity, and not on the side of correctness,
consistency, or completeness. He calls this the “Worse Is Better” philoso-
phy and shows how it yields programs that are technically inferior to pro-
grams designed where correctness and consistency are paramount, but that
are evolutionarily superior because they port more easily. Just like a virus.
There’s nothing elegant about viruses, but they are very successful. You
will probably die from one, in fact.A comforting thought.Sex, Drugs, and Unix
While Unix spread like a virus, its adoption by so many can only be
described by another metaphor: that of a designer drug.Like any good drug dealer, AT&T gave away free samples of Unix to uni-
versity types during the 1970s. Researchers and students got a better high
from Unix than any other OS. It was cheap, it was malleable, it ran on rela-
tively inexpensive hardware. And it was superior, for their needs, to any-
thing else they could obtain. Better operating systems that would soon be
competing with Unix either required hardware that universities couldn’t
afford, weren’t “free,” or weren’t yet out of the labs that were busily syn-
thesizing them. AT&T’s policy produced, at no cost, scads of freshly
minted Unix hackers that were psychologically, if not chemically, depen-
dent on Unix.