Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Unix Philosophy

catb.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 269 posts

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#11

Post by philh »

arethuza wrote: post #9
peteretep wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtably a deep philosophical argument, but brighter minds than ours have written at length about it both in science and jurisprudence. "Research ethics" and "Exclusionary rule" would be good illustrating Wikipedia articles.

Out of interest, what are these political views that are so terrible that they should influence our views of his thoughts on operating system design? Edit: I really don't have any idea what they are...

Among other unpopular opinions, ESR denies AGW, believes that race and IQ are correlated, and was strongly in favor of the Iraq war.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#12

Post by philh »

peteretep wrote: post #8
yarou wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really bizarre. A person's political views have no bearing on the validity or usefulness of what they write.

Undoubtably a deep philosophical argument, but brighter minds than ours have written at length about it both in science and jurisprudence. "Research ethics" and "Exclusionary rule" would be good illustrating Wikipedia articles.

Those seem only tenuously linked to me.

Research ethics forbids you from doing certain things when performing research, but it doesn't say anything about the political opinions of researchers.

The exclusionary rule says that if evidence is obtained by breaking the rules, it can't be used in court. But again, it doesn't say anything about the political opinions of the person obtaining the evidence.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#13

Post by jokoon »

This should be taught in any programming class.

> Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.

Although, does the python rule "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." contradict this one ?

> Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

I wonder what rob pike has to say about OOP or java, I wish I could listen to it.

Also it says that text is a good representation of data, but I think he meant it as intermediary. I don't think xml or html are really good choices when you see all the CPU cycles spent parsing those.

> Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.

I prefer this rules versus the "no premature optimization" rule.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#14

Post by philh »

yarou wrote: post #4
jumblesale wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really great read and did a lot to inform my approach to writing all kinds of software. It's a shame that I cringe to recommend in now due to the politics of its author.

That's really bizarre. A person's political views have no bearing on the validity or usefulness of what they write.

If someone writes something, it's "true" or "false" regardless of their political opinions.

On the other hand, someone's political opinions change what they're likely to write, so if you don't know whether it's "true" or not, knowing their political opinions can justifiably alter your beliefs about the text.

I think people tend to overweight the second consideration, and it seems particularly irrelevant in this case.

(Scare quotes because it's rarely as simple as true-or-false, e.g. "literally true but horribly misleading".)

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#15

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

arethuza wrote: post #9
peteretep wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtably a deep philosophical argument, but brighter minds than ours have written at length about it both in science and jurisprudence. "Research ethics" and "Exclusionary rule" would be good illustrating Wikipedia articles.

Out of interest, what are these political views that are so terrible that they should influence our views of his thoughts on operating system design? Edit: I really don't have any idea what they are...

He's pro 'gun-rights'.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#16

Post by arethuza »

yarou wrote: post #4
jumblesale wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really great read and did a lot to inform my approach to writing all kinds of software. It's a shame that I cringe to recommend in now due to the politics of its author.

That's really bizarre. A person's political views have no bearing on the validity or usefulness of what they write.

I don't think jumblesale is arguing that his writings are incorrect or not useful, just that he doesn't like popularizing his works because of the authors political views.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#17

Post by tobik »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #2

People will hang shit on ESR, but The Art of Unix Programming is one of my all time favourite books. If you haven't read it, even if you're not a *nix developer, do yourself a favour and just skim the table of contents... something may pique your interest and you may learn a thing or two. It's also free online: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/

Thanks. PDF version is here: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/graphics/taoup.p...

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#18

Post by peteretep »

philh wrote: post #12
peteretep wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtably a deep philosophical argument, but brighter minds than ours have written at length about it both in science and jurisprudence. "Research ethics" and "Exclusionary rule" would be good illustrating Wikipedia articles.

Those seem only tenuously linked to me. Research ethics forbids you from doing certain things when performing research, but it doesn't say anything about the political opinions of researchers. The exclusionary rule says that if evidence is obtained by breaking the rules, it can't be used in court. But again, it doesn't say anything about the political opinions of the person obtaining the evidence.

Both are cases where the truth of the situation is put aside from a moral standpoint, which is analogous to suggesting that someone's political views could influence the reception of their engineering views.

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#19

Post by harkyns_castle »

philh wrote: post #11
arethuza wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, what are these political views that are so terrible that they should influence our views of his thoughts on operating system design? Edit: I really don't have any idea what they are...

Among other unpopular opinions, ESR denies AGW, believes that race and IQ are correlated, and was strongly in favor of the Iraq war.

That's a surprise to me, I hadn't heard any of that. Not that I've followed things that closely.

What I found so far is [1], in which he seems to just be doing a bit of a "show me the data" thing wrt global warming (its fairly old I guess in defense). In [2] he's definitely saying IQ is race-related, and gender related to a lesser extent, in my quick readings.

I quite like that he doesn't mince his words, sugar coat things or seem to take any notice of popular opinion/political correctness. Not agreeing with him, but I find that refreshing.

[1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1436 [2] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?m=200311

Re: The Unix Philosophy

#20

Post by mtrn »

jokoon wrote: post #13

This should be taught in any programming class. > Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”. Although, does the python rule "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." contradict this one ? > Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are ce…

> I wonder what rob pike has to say about OOP or java, I wish I could listen to it.

12 minutes where Pike talks about a few things, that seem to be wrong in our software world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kj5ApnhPAE

Post reply on HN