The UNIX Hater's Handbook: The Best of UNIX-Haters On-line Mailing Reveals Why UNIX Must Die! [Paperback]

Simson L. Garfinkel (Author), Daniel Weise (Editor), Simson Garfinkel (Editor), Steven Strassmann (Editor), Donald Norman (Foreword), Dennis Ritchie (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1994

This text for UNIX haters unmasks the myths about UNIX.

Product Details

• Paperback: 329 pages
• Publisher: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.; First Edition edition (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568842031
• ISBN-13: 978-1568842035
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,122,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and often even true -- now free!, January 25, 2004

By 

Stavros Macrakis (Cambridge, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The UNIX Hater's Handbook: The Best of UNIX-Haters On-line Mailing Reveals Why UNIX Must Die! (Paperback)

This is a breezy book poking fun at the foibles of Unix. As a sarcastic screed, it is not at all balanced or fair or reasonable, or even necessarily historically accurate. But it is valuable.

(...)It is valuable because in many ways it is a catalog of design errors that you can make when putting together a system -- any system. Designers of new systems should be able to learn from it.

It is valuable because it shows you how over time design decisions and compromises that seemed reasonable can come to seem ridiculous.

It is valuable because it really does show you that "Worse is Better". That is, Unix really did survive, and all the 'better' systems like Multics and Tenex failed (and of course they weren't necessarily better across the board). There is a lesson here for engineers who don't understand that making the 'best' product by some narrow technical definition does NOT guarantee market success.

It is valuable because it documents some of the *alternatives* to doing things the Unix way. Not enough to substitute for studying Multics and whatever, but valuable nonetheless.

It is valuable because many of the analyses of Unix apply to other systems, certainly including MS-DOS and Windows. Yes, Windows does some things better, and some things worse. But you're smart; you can figure out how to transpose the analysis.

Finally, it is valuable because it punctures the pretensions of those who hold up Unix (and Linux) as images of perfection.

Worth reading.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful! A non-recycler!, August 15, 2002

By 

David (Dalls, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The UNIX Hater's Handbook: The Best of UNIX-Haters On-line Mailing Reveals Why UNIX Must Die! (Paperback)

This book is a very entertaining read--hilarious, and largely historically accurate. If you know and love UNIX, you will love this book. If you only know macOS or windows, you'll be lost. Bear in mind that most of these essays were accurate in 1988, but are now historical footnotes (and valuable as such). This is no longer fertile ground for anti-UNIX arguments, despite some of the above comments by the less-informed.

Find one used, and enjoy!

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the funniest books I've ever read, June 24, 1999

By 

Cay Horstmann (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The UNIX Hater's Handbook: The Best of UNIX-Haters On-line Mailing Reveals Why UNIX Must Die! (Paperback)

I can't believe this book is out of print. Get a copy before it vanishes forever.

If you've ever suffered through cryptic Unix commands, man pages, or error messages, only to be told by some self-righteous Unix apologist that these problems are *your fault* and that Unix is *perfect and beyond criticism*, you'll love this book.

If you think that Unix is perfect and beyond criticism, you'll hate the book.

Don't get me wrong--I don't hate Unix, and probably the authors don't either. The real, and well-deserved, target of the satire are the self-righteous apologists.