The Unix Attitude 37The Unix Attitude........................................................................
We’ve painted a rather bleak picture: cryptic command names, inconsistent
and unpredictable behavior, no protection from dangerous commands,
barely acceptable online documentation, and a lax approach to error check-
ing and robustness. Those visiting the House of Unix are not in for a treat.
They are visitors to a U.N. relief mission in the third world, not to Disney-
land. How did Unix get this way? Part of the answer is historical, as we’ve
indicated. But there’s another part to the answer: the culture of those con-
structing and extending Unix over the years. This culture is called the
“Unix Philosophy.”
The Unix Philosophy isn’t written advice that comes from Bell Labs or the
Unix Systems Laboratory. It’s a free-floating ethic. Various authors list
different attributes of it. Life with Unix, by Don Libes and Sandy Ressler
(Prentice Hall, 1989) does a particularly good job summing it up:
- Small is beautiful.
- 10 percent of the work solves 90 percent of the problems.
- When faced with a choice, do whatever is simpler.
According to the empirical evidence of Unix programs and utilities, a more
accurate summary of the Unix Philosophy is:
- A small program is more desirable than a program that is functional
or correct. - A shoddy job is perfectly acceptable.
- When faced with a choice, cop out.
Unix doesn’t have a philosophy: it has an attitude. An attitude that says a
simple, half-done job is more virtuous than a complex, well-executed one.
An attitude that asserts the programmer’s time is more important than the
user’s time, even if there are thousands of users for every programmer. It’s
an attitude that praises the lowest common denominator.
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 89 19:01:36 EST
From: David Chapman <[email protected]>
To: UNIX-HATERS
Subject: killing jobs; the Unix design paradigm.I recently learned how to kill a job on Unix. In the process I learned a
lot about the wisdom and power of Unix, and I thought I’d share it
with you.