Two views of the Unix philosophy

The first is The Art of Unix Programming by Eric Raymond (published by Addison Wesley). We have discussed this book before on these pages, so a detailed look is not necessary at this time. Suffice to say that Eric's book is now available in the stores. It is also available on the net under a relatively restrictive Creative Commons license.

The other entry is Linux and the Unix Philosophy by Mike Gancarz, published by Digital Press. This book appears to be a fairly straightforward remake of Mr. Gancarz's The Unix Philosophy, published in 1994. References to Linux have been retrofitted in, but the book is little changed. If the underlying Unix philosophy is as enduring as these books would have us believe, a book from 1994 should still be current now. Unfortunately, Linux and the Unix Philosophy looks old; consider, for example, the author's advice that a function's parameter list should fit on a single line of an (80-column) screen. That might have been good advice for an old-style C function, but, in the modern world, where parameter names and types all go together, even a very short parameter list can take multiple lines.

This book also ignores many of the features of modern Unix/Linux programming, including scripting languages (beyond the shell) and graphical interfaces. In Mr. Gancarz's view, all programs are small, and their functions are minimal; he even states that multi-column output has bloated the ls command excessively. Or consider:

This discussion does not fit your editor's world, where the best way to improve the performance of a system is often to add memory.

The most interesting area of investigation, however, would be how the two books characterize the Unix philosophy. Happily, both of them provide nice sets of rules suitable for slides in any executive briefing - or a summary table in LWN. So, without further ado...

The further expression of these rules shows the relative age and limited scope of Gancarz's book. He talks about flat text files, while Raymond discusses the importance of transparent, textual network protocols as well. Raymond covers the network, modern languages, and the ups and downs of programming techniques as an integral part of his book; Gancarz has a brief "Brave New World" chapter at the end where he treats bleeding-edge technologies like the Internet, artificial intelligence, object-oriented programming, and Java.

On the other side, Eric Raymond's tendencies are well known. The Art of Unix Programming can be verbose and gives a lot of coverage to Mr. Raymond's own work and beliefs. Most people would have found a way to write a Unix book without including quotes from famous people on the evils of gun control, for example.

Both books neglect areas of great concern for any contemporary software developer. Neither will give as much help as the implementer of a web browser, office suite, or DVD player might like. No developer can afford to be unaware of security issues in the current environment, but neither author devotes any space to security. What is the Unix philosophy's approach to security? Silence in response to that question is all too telling.

In the end, if your editor had to choose between the two books, he would go with The Art of Unix Programming, though both have their merits. Readers of either would be well advised to heed Mr. Raymond's last rule, however: distrust anybody who claims to know the "one true way."