The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
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The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
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Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#2This is a hilarious book, even if you're a *nix supporter.
Highly recommended.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#3This is a hilarious book, even if you're a *nix supporter. Highly recommended.
There's this relevant joke about Linux which is that Linux is very user friendly... it's just very picky about who its friends are.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#4I've just skimmed the TOC and, having never seen this book before, I'm a little in love. Here's why
It's a cynical UNIX manual from the 1990's. Here:
> 14 NFS..............283
> Nightmare File System
> Not Fully Serviceable............284
> No File Security...........287
> Not File System Specific? (Not Quite)..........292
Here also:
> The Oxymoronic World of Unix Security .......243
> Holes in the Armor ........244
> The Worms Crawl In ..........257
I work in IT systems development in a University IT department. I want to read this take on UNIX from 1994, just to see how much better things haven't gotten.
OK, the state of the art has gotten better, but if I compare my work environment which is byzantine complexity and full of bespoke garbage sometimes, to the hells apparently described herein, I bet I can find more similarities than differences.
And that will hopefully make me a more effective communicator about how to make things better with modern convenience technologies that we're not using enough. (Dare I say Kubernetes is the one big thing that is actually majorly different today, compared to UNIX in the 1990's.)
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#5Much of the book is very dated, complaining about things that have been rectified many years ago.
However I think it still has a valuable lesson that many, particularly young CS students, would benefit from: Unix is not the perfect fundamental model for computing. C is not the gospel. Their prevalence today is as much a historic and economic accident as a rational consequence of their objective merits. Both are social artifacts, not manifestations of fundamental truths.
Worshipers of Bell Labs (such as the cat-v or suckless folks) don't get this, and I've seen them pull a lot of people down that rabbit hole with them, particularly young and inexperienced students.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#6This is one of my favorite books, and I own the hard-copy. As I was reading it, I found that a lot of the problems mentioned seem to be affecting Windows and macOS, while Linux based distros have them resolved.
I found the commentary and history both hilarious and informative. The anti-forward by Dennis Ritchie is also very funny.
If anyone has found similar CS style humor books, please let me know!
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#7Much of the book is very dated, complaining about things that have been rectified many years ago. However I think it still has a valuable lesson that many, particularly young CS students, would benefit from: Unix is not the perfect fundamental model for computing. C is not the gospel. Their prevalence today is as much a historic and economic accident as a rational consequence of their objective merits. Both are socia…
>particularly young CS students
>C is not the gospel
>Worshipers of Bell Labs
I think you're one or two generations late, you'd have to be a hipster to be a CS student worshiping C and Bell Labs these days. I suspect most CS students these days start around web technologies using VS Code in stock Ubuntu, not hacking C programs using Emacs running in dwm on a heavily customized Slackware.
I do agree that cat-v and the suckless folks should be taken with a massive grain of salt though.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#8Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#9I loved this book back in the day—it even came with its own barf bag.
But how things change. This was before macOS became BSD-based and before I really got into web development because today, I spend so much time at a shell prompt inside of the Terminal app. I certainly appreciate the elegance of Unix a lot more today.
Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]
#10Much of the book is very dated, complaining about things that have been rectified many years ago. However I think it still has a valuable lesson that many, particularly young CS students, would benefit from: Unix is not the perfect fundamental model for computing. C is not the gospel. Their prevalence today is as much a historic and economic accident as a rational consequence of their objective merits. Both are socia…
>particularly young CS students >C is not the gospel >Worshipers of Bell Labs I think you're one or two generations late, you'd have to be a hipster to be a CS student worshiping C and Bell Labs these days. I suspect most CS students these days start around web technologies using VS Code in stock Ubuntu, not hacking C programs using Emacs running in dwm on a heavily customized Slackware. I do agree that cat-v and the…
I used to be a suckless person, not official, but I had branded them _my tribe_. I still appreciate them for their simplicity target, but the means and methods for me have changed.
When I first came across the UHH, my systems exposure was AmigaDOS, DOS, Windows 95, Windows NT 4, Ultrix, FreeBSD and Linux. I had never used VMS in any meaningful way (David Cutler is a well known Unix Hater) and the idea of "Hating Unix" was off putting because it seemed so useful, and the pain inflicted I internalized as my failing for not properly understanding it. I had no idea how much of a patched together mess it was. Hell, I think if we had continued using DOS that it would have eventually gotten a scheduler, memory protection, pipes and signals and then ended up in largely the same place.
At the part of the stack that most programmers are operating now, the operating system doesn't matter much. We can take the pain points from UHH and apply them to our own lack of system design.