I really enjoyed reading this book. It is easy to read, concise but funny, and made me think a lot of things about how I write my own code and how make it better.
I think this book can help every software developer. The Unix Philosophy is applied in all the Unix system, but can be applied outside Unix, to any software.
I learned and reaffirmed several ideas reading this book. Highly recommended. Five stars are only for very good books. I think this book deserves it.
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This is one of ten books that I give to new employees as a greeting gift when they start working at my company Browserling!
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2016
This is one of the most important books about software development ever written. This book is not about how to write software but about philosophy of writing software the Unix way. You will only appreciate this book after a decade in software industry. I remember reading it when I was like 15 and I thought cool but only a decade later I started appreciating philosophical principles laid out in this book.* Small is beautiful.* Make each program do one thing well.* Build a prototype as soon as possible.* Choose portability over efficiency.* Store data in flat text files.* Use software leverage to your advantage.* Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.* Avoid captive user interfaces.* Make every program a filter.I try to follow most of Unix philosophy closely when writing my software. I write tiny utilities that do one thing and only one thing well. I ignore frameworks as they're bloatware that do all the things. I build prototypes as soon as possible and show it to everyone, get feedback and quickly iterate to make it a finished program. I don't care much about portability. I store data in text files and sqlite databases. I leverage helper libraries and utilities but I don't leverage frameworks or larger code pieces that can often be rewritten in 90 lines of code to have 90% of their functionality and you don't need the remaining 10% anyway. I use shell scripts exclusively to connect my programs. I avoid captive user interfaces. I sometimes make my programs a filter and sometimes I don't. Sometimes making programs to filter data don't make sense.This is one of ten books that I give to new employees as a greeting gift when they start working at my company Browserling. They can choose 9 other books from my 100+ book list but I force everyone who works at Browserling to read this book as we've an incredible Unix culture at Browserling. If you haven't read this book, you will have trouble understanding the culture and fitting in.There are several more tenets, ideas which tend to be part of the Unix world's belief system and that are part of Unix culture. Here are a few that matter:* Allow the user to tailor the environment.* Use lower case and keep it short.* Silence is golden.* Think parallel.* The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.* Look for the 90% solution.* Worse is better.* Think hierarchically.I won't comment on these as this book review is taking over the entire Amazon review page but you can look into these on your own. These are really beautiful and it takes many years to appreciate them and incorporate them in your thinking and how you get things done.A newer version of this book exists called Linux and the UNIX Philosophy. I don't have it but I just ordered it as I was writing this text.I've placed this book #27 in my Top 100 Mathematics, UNIX and Science books list. Google for >>catonmat top 100 math unix science books<< to find my list.
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2016
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This is one of ten books that I give to new employees as a greeting gift when they start working at my company Browserling!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 10, 2016
This is one of ten books that I give to new employees as a greeting gift when they start working at my company Browserling!
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 10, 2016
This is one of the most important books about software development ever written. This book is not about how to write software but about philosophy of writing software the Unix way. You will only appreciate this book after a decade in software industry. I remember reading it when I was like 15 and I thought cool but only a decade later I started appreciating philosophical principles laid out in this book.Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 10, 2016
* Small is beautiful.
* Make each program do one thing well.
* Build a prototype as soon as possible.
* Choose portability over efficiency.
* Store data in flat text files.
* Use software leverage to your advantage.
* Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.
* Avoid captive user interfaces.
* Make every program a filter.
I try to follow most of Unix philosophy closely when writing my software. I write tiny utilities that do one thing and only one thing well. I ignore frameworks as they're bloatware that do all the things. I build prototypes as soon as possible and show it to everyone, get feedback and quickly iterate to make it a finished program. I don't care much about portability. I store data in text files and sqlite databases. I leverage helper libraries and utilities but I don't leverage frameworks or larger code pieces that can often be rewritten in 90 lines of code to have 90% of their functionality and you don't need the remaining 10% anyway. I use shell scripts exclusively to connect my programs. I avoid captive user interfaces. I sometimes make my programs a filter and sometimes I don't. Sometimes making programs to filter data don't make sense.
This is one of ten books that I give to new employees as a greeting gift when they start working at my company Browserling. They can choose 9 other books from my 100+ book list but I force everyone who works at Browserling to read this book as we've an incredible Unix culture at Browserling. If you haven't read this book, you will have trouble understanding the culture and fitting in.
There are several more tenets, ideas which tend to be part of the Unix world's belief system and that are part of Unix culture. Here are a few that matter:
* Allow the user to tailor the environment.
* Use lower case and keep it short.
* Silence is golden.
* Think parallel.
* The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
* Look for the 90% solution.
* Worse is better.
* Think hierarchically.
I won't comment on these as this book review is taking over the entire Amazon review page but you can look into these on your own. These are really beautiful and it takes many years to appreciate them and incorporate them in your thinking and how you get things done.
A newer version of this book exists called Linux and the UNIX Philosophy. I don't have it but I just ordered it as I was writing this text.
I've placed this book #27 in my Top 100 Mathematics, UNIX and Science books list. Google for >>catonmat top 100 math unix science books<< to find my list.
Images in this review
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