Unix philosophy - Revision history

Robert Brockway at 06:10, 28 April 2024

2024-04-28T06:10:32Z

Robert Brockway at 13:33, 22 March 2024

2024-03-22T13:33:36Z

Robert Brockway at 11:06, 19 March 2024

2024-03-19T11:06:10Z

Robert Brockway at 11:05, 19 March 2024

2024-03-19T11:05:51Z

Robert Brockway at 11:05, 19 March 2024

2024-03-19T11:05:40Z

Robert Brockway at 11:05, 19 March 2024

2024-03-19T11:05:13Z

Robert Brockway at 11:03, 19 March 2024

2024-03-19T11:03:56Z

Robert Brockway: Partial inport from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unix_philosophy&oldid=1211008594

2024-03-19T11:03:40Z

Partial inport from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unix_philosophy&oldid=1211008594

Robert Brockway: Partial import from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unix_philosophy&oldid=1211008594

2024-03-19T11:00:46Z

Partial import from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unix_philosophy&oldid=1211008594

New page

The [[Unix philosophy]], originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix developers were important in bringing the concepts of modularity and reusability into software engineering practice, spawning a "software tools" movement. Over time, the leading developers of Unix (and programs that ran on it) established a set of cultural norms for developing software; these norms became as important and influential as the technology of Unix itself, and have been termed the "Unix philosophy."

The Unix philosophy emphasizes building simple, compact, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design.

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 *Self-supporting system: all Unix software is maintained under Unix.
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 *Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new "features".
 *Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don't clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don't insist on interactive input.
-*Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don't hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.
+*Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don't hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.  In the case of [[FOSS]] this is often described as [[release early, release often]].
 *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.

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 *Self-supporting system: all Unix software is maintained under Unix.
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+{{IT}}
 {{Philosophy}}
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← Older revision		Revision as of 11:05, 19 March 2024
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−	[[File:Ken_Thompson_and_Dennis_Ritchie--1973.jpg\|Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.]]	+	[[File:Ken_Thompson_and_Dennis_Ritchie--1973.jpg\|thumb\|Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.]]

	The [[Unix philosophy]], originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix developers were important in bringing the concepts of modularity and reusability into software engineering practice, spawning a "software tools" movement. Over time, the leading developers of Unix (and programs that ran on it) established a set of cultural norms for developing software; these norms became as important and influential as the technology of Unix itself, and have been termed the "Unix philosophy."		The [[Unix philosophy]], originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix developers were important in bringing the concepts of modularity and reusability into software engineering practice, spawning a "software tools" movement. Over time, the leading developers of Unix (and programs that ran on it) established a set of cultural norms for developing software; these norms became as important and influential as the technology of Unix itself, and have been termed the "Unix philosophy."

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 The Unix philosophy emphasizes building simple, compact, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design.
-The Unix philosophy is documented by Doug McIlroy[1] in the Bell System Technical Journal from 1978:
+The Unix philosophy is documented by Doug McIlroy in the Bell System Technical Journal from 1978:
 *Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new "features".
@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 *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.
-It was later summarized by Peter H. Salus in A Quarter-Century of Unix (1994):[1]
+It was later summarized by Peter H. Salus in A Quarter-Century of Unix (1994):
 *Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
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 *Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
-In their Unix paper of 1974, Ritchie and Thompson quote the following design considerations:[3]
+In their Unix paper of 1974, Ritchie and Thompson quote the following design considerations:
 *Make it easy to write, test, and run programs.