Unix is like a supergiant oil tanker: it carries a lot of weight, cannot be stopped or turned quickly, and does enormous damage while its owners and designers tell us how necessary it is to modern civilization.
Here's an example from The Unix-Haters Handbook, showing how humans talk to Unix: "sed 's / , / / g' | grep -v $USER | sort | uniq." I've probably gotten this line wrong because (1) sometimes the open areas are spaces, and sometimes they are tabs (which look exactly the same on the screen or printed output), and this can make a difference in what happens, and (2) I don't have any idea what it does (and I used Unix systems for years).
The book records the incredibly arrogant attitudes of some of Unix's proponents. Take this comment from an international bulletin board, about the fact that Unix cannot undelete a file erased accidentally:
"Someday, you are going to accidentally type something like
rm * .foo and find you just deleted '*' instead of '*.foo'. Consider it a rite of passage...."
For non-Unixites I should explain that "rm" means "remove." The asterisk stands for any name, so *.foo means any file name that ends with ".foo." But if you put in a space and type rm * .foo, then Unix removes all files (because of the space, it finds the ".foo" only after the dirty work has been done). And there's no Undo.
A "rite of passage"? In no other industry could a manufacturer take such a cavalier attitude toward a faulty product.
Here and there, the tone of The Unix-Haters Handbook becomes a little shrill, and once or twice its attacks miss their lawful prey - or go a bit overboard in praising competitive systems. But in the main, it is a well-justified cautionary tale. I hope it is widely read, its moral taken to heart.
The Unix-Haters Handbook, by Simson L. Garfinkel, Daniel Weise, and Steven Strassmann: US$16.95. IDG Books Worldwide: (800) 434 3422, +1 (415) 312 0650.
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The Unix-Haters Handbook
