(Re)-Discover the Art of Unix Programming

openbsd98324 · 06-18-2022, 01:15 AM

Hello,

The Art of Unix Programming is to shorten the code and to reduce the dependencies, endlessly. The code needs to be shorter and more efficient.

The Art of Programming has been described many years ago by earlier Unix programmers.

Code:

 links-gui -g  "https://homepage.cs.uri.edu/~thenry/resources/unix_art/ch01s06.html"

The assembly language or the C language are highly recommended.

Have a look, this is worth to study.

Have Fun!

Quote:

Basics of the Unix Philosophy
The ‘Unix philosophy’ originated with Ken Thompson's early meditations on how to design a small but capable operating system with a clean service interface. It grew as the Unix culture learned things about how to get maximum leverage out of Thompson's design. It absorbed lessons from many sources along the way.

The Unix philosophy is not a formal design method. It wasn't handed down from the high fastnesses of theoretical computer science as a way to produce theoretically perfect software. Nor is it that perennial executive's mirage, some way to magically extract innovative but reliable software on too short a deadline from unmotivated, badly managed, and underpaid programmers.

The Unix philosophy (like successful folk traditions in other engineering disciplines) is bottom-up, not top-down. It is pragmatic and grounded in experience. It is not to be found in official methods and standards, but rather in the implicit half-reflexive knowledge, the expertise that the Unix culture transmits. It encourages a sense of proportion and skepticism — and shows both by having a sense of (often subversive) humor.

Doug McIlroy, the inventor of Unix pipes and one of the founders of the Unix tradition, had this to say at the time [McIlroy78]:
(...)

hazel · 06-18-2022, 07:33 AM

I love the philosophy, but how exactly do you use it to write a browser that will handle modern javascript-ridden websites? Or even a word processor? And it's no answer to say, "Don't use a word processor, use groff markup" because that's not feasible for most ordinary users.

dugan · 06-18-2022, 12:27 PM

Now being carried on as the suckless philosphy.

openbsd98324 · 06-18-2022, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Now being carried on as the suckless philosphy.

The suckless source code sucks as well. There are numerous examples on their site.
Still, better than a systemd

What about Unix v6 source code?

dugan · 06-19-2022, 10:41 AM

Look. Every time someone talks about how well-engineered things were back in those good old days, I feel obligated to point out that that's when a single piece of malware hacked into and crashed the entire Internet.

jailbait · 06-19-2022, 12:35 PM

Way back in the day the cost of hardware was by far the overriding consideration in computing. The cost for programmers' time was almost trivial in comparison. So programmer's would spend large amounts of time and effort to maximize the machine efficiency of their programs.

Over time the cost of hardware has decreased steadily and drastically even in spite of IBM's efforts to maintain monopoly profit margins and in spite of inflation. Programming costs in real terms have remained fairly constant over time. These days maximizing programmer efficiency is more important than minimizing hardware costs.

The "Unix philosophy" is very much a product of the old ratio of hardware cost to programmer cost. I would take it with a grain of salt when looking at current programming techniques.

openbsd98324 · 06-22-2022, 02:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jailbait

Way back in the day the cost of hardware was by far the overriding consideration in computing. The cost for programmers' time was almost trivial in comparison. So programmer's would spend large amounts of time and effort to maximize the machine efficiency of their programs.

Over time the cost of hardware has decreased steadily and drastically even in spite of IBM's efforts to maintain monopoly profit margins and in spite of inflation. Programming costs in real terms have remained fairly constant over time. These days maximizing programmer efficiency is more important than minimizing hardware costs.

The "Unix philosophy" is very much a product of the old ratio of hardware cost to programmer cost. I would take it with a grain of salt when looking at current programming techniques.

systemd is best example of non unix philosophy, it is a waste of resource and many much more. The web is too a good picture.