Eric Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming

I am not by any means a Unix geek, but I'm reading The Art of Unix Programming, by Eric Raymond. Eric wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which is one of those influential books I always meant to read.

This is a wonderful read, primarily about the design decisions and the philosphy that have made unix such an influential and widespread technology base that has lasted over thirty years. As Eric says:

"... the book doesn't focus so much on 'what' as on 'why', showing the connection between Unix philosophy and practice through case studies in widely available open-source software."

I love the fact that the book is available both on printed paper and online. The online version is free and made available under a Creative Commons license. I started reading it online, but am going to pick up the paper version to finish...hmmm, sounds suspiciously like a succesful business model...

I was struck by this passage, from the section Basics of the Unix Philosophy, expressed 25 years ago (!!) by Doug McIlroy, the inventor of Unix pipes and one of the founders of the Unix tradition:

(i) Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

(iv) Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you've finished using them.