Maximum PC

It's late at night, and I found this at Programmer's Paradise, so I thought I'd post it here. Eric S. Raymond is absolutely brilliant, never heard of him before, but he writes a lot of good articles. His web site is:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/

Now, what makes ESR so special is he wrote a book called "The Art of Unix programming" and in it, he divulges on Unix culture. Since we're all Linux lovers, let's at least get it right!

Here's the link: http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/

I haven't read the entire book, but I will one of these days. He goes into detail as to why Unix has withstood the test of time, and why Unix is still loved by a lot of people. A lot of what he talks about is for those are novice Unix developers (like me) but it still applies to the general Unix community since Unix has a certain mindset that is far beyond the scope of Windows.

I've only been using Linux for a short time - less than a year - and already I'm learning the ins and outs of the system. Surprisingly enough, Unix gets a lot of things right, and one of them is because Unix is just so much fun to tear apart and make anew. I love this quote from the book


If you don't think this is true, look at Linux. Linux was just a hobby which became into a powerful, production quality Operating System. Even Mac knew that BSD Unix had a lot of power, so they took the code and implemented it in their OS X. Heck, OS X is more BSD than Mac, the underlying framework and the kernel is almost all Unix.

Now, if you're a developer, this is a good read. However, the first few pages of the book are worth noting if you're new to the Unix circles.[/quote]

Great post! thanks!!

Thanks! I lost an entire night of sleep reading it. Great stuff!

Apparently, Eric S. Raymond is very popular in the Open Source Community. I'm glad that there are people out there with such a passion for Unix, it makes the whole Unix/Linux circles easier to jump into than ever before. His writings are very good, in fact, you should read the Tao Of Programming, it's such a fun read. I started laughing at some of them, and was enlightened in a lot of it.

When I FIRST started to dabble in Linux (circa 1998) I was assisted by some random Linux user in a #Linux chatroom. This patient person helped me through compiling the Kernel and getting my first system up and running. I have been hooked ever since.

I can't imagine not running my own hosting (web/mail), DNS, Game server, Vent server, you name it....There are so many possibilities.

Even modding your Xbox, MythTV, TiVo, on and on and on.....

I wonder if this is on some sort of printed text.

Looks pretty interesting.

I remember when I was in college, we acquired a number of AT&T systems running System V, in wihch there was some stipulation that some meaningful programs came from some education of the system.

At the time, I had no clue what the hell that meant. We're all like...what are they going to write..who is going to write this? Now understand, this was the late 80s, so I hope one can appreciate that statement.

Now looking back on things, it's apparent to me that was really a groundwork for what we know and do today.

The art of Unix Programming is an actual book. You can try looking for it on Amazon or something.

As for his articles, I found them to be interesting, and while they don't teach Unix at my school, I ended up having to teach myself. It's sad that in my school, they're very Microsoft based, and that aggrevates me since most of the C.S. topics we study were originally derived in Unix. It's kind of funny that even the language we use (C++) was built off of Unix.

I'm a firm believer that CS cirriculums should focus a lot on Unix environments simply for the pure reason that Unix teaches a lot of good fundamentals, and I'm starting to pick-up on it now that I'm using Linux all the more.

No doubt as far as teaching yourself.

I had to do the same thing. Fortunate things was we had a pretty cool administrtor (who actually did some work with developing the Berkley version IIRC) and who would teach you the world with that if you gave him the chance.

I'll add though...feel fortunate you didn't have to have VI, uuto, uucp, uupick, etc..forced down your throat.

ESR is pretty cool. He has a writing style that is fairly light and usually fun to read - the stranger from wo0t still makes me giggle. I also agree strongly with his programming language philosphy. BUT... he is an extremist w/ all the baggage that comes with the exteme. He just doesn't have that obvious "I'm a loon" quality like RMS. I've seen posts on the LKML by Linus putting him back in place on more than one occasion.

For example, he 'predicted' that within five years the entire software industry will be transformed by the OSS movement. That prediction would have ended about two years ago now and things aren't really all that different from when he made the prediction. A recent article in the ACM touched on this, some of the inconsistencies in the bazaar, and some other missed OSS predictions.

Last year he postulated on the inevitable demise of Sun and what they should do with Java. Well, Sun didn't die (in fact, the more smack people talk about them - the better they seem to do! go figure). This year, you won't find that 'prediction' on his site - just an updated version in which Sun no longer dies, but Java should still be opened up. Maybe he's come to realize that the crystal ball is a bit foggy.

Anyways, read him and enjoy - I think some of the tao's funny as hell - just keep in mind that he is on the edge (or very close to it).