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The one thing unix got "wrong" is the separation between mechanism and policy. The relationship is policy utilizes the mechanism, but mechanism is independent of policy. Policy always evolve, mechanism stay same very long time. In the long term, however, it may turn out that this ‘mistake’ confers a critical advantage — because policy tends to have a short lifetime, mechanism a long one.

Some problem the author state Unix inhere for better or worse. Unix files have no structure above byte level. File deletion is irrevocable. The Unix security model is arguably too primitive. Job control is botched. There are too many different kinds of names for things. Having a file system at all may have been the wrong choice.

Actual software used as case studies in this book. cdrtools tool used to write cd-roms, xcdroast with frontend for it. fetchmail retrieves mail from remote-mail servers using
the POP3 or IMAP post-office protocols.
GIMP for image manipulation. mutt a text based mail agent. xmlto renders various documents

Note to self. The book borrows a lot of reference from Zen. Good thing I'm familiar with it. Zen not as a religion but a mental discipline.

The part "Context" is to set history and motivation of what becomes Unix. The part "Design" layout the principles that help to design solutions that solve problems. The part "Tools" talks about tools in Unix to solve actual problems. The part "Community" talks about human2human interaction that make Unix very effective culture

"Knowledge lets you deduce the right
thing to do; expertise makes the right thing a reflex, hardly requiring conscious thought at all.", Exactly what I'm looking, mental shortcuts expert innately know, but have difficulty expressing it. I decide to read the history part, because the intuition behind Unix philosophy lay behind the historic background. Certain history bites need to take a grain of salt

The book structure is ::

I.Context
- Philosphy
- History
- Constrasts
II. Design
- Modularity
- Textuality
- Transparency
- Multipgrogramming
- Minilanguages
- COnfiguration
- Interfaces
- Optimization
- Complexity
III.Implementation
- Languages
- Tools
- Reuse
- Documentation
- Open Source
- Futures

I.Context
- Philosphy
- History
- Constrasts
II. Design
- Modularity
- Textuality
- Transparency
- Multipgrogramming
- Minilanguages
- COnfiguration
- Interfaces
- Optimization
- Complexity
III.Implementation
- Languages
- Tools
- Reuse
- Documentation
- Open Source
- Futures

From what I researched this books is not about Unix programming, but on the design and technical decisions that made Unix a successful piece of software. I'm interested to know what are this ideas and how they correlate to each other. It s a thick book 533 pages, I probable will skip some chapter that touches on historic background. 533 pages/15 page per day = 33 days. Should be ok.

Stupid test are being written. Crap tests exists. Reading this book to give me a mindset to approach the condition.


Not reading everything now. Just some parts.

Stupid test are being written. Crap tests exists. Reading this book to give me a mindset to approach the condition.


Not reading everything now. Just some parts.

I'm actually reading the fourth edition, but couldnt find the fourth edition on goodreads so just pretending this is the page for the fourth edition.

Just starting.

The author has a udacity course on this systematic debugging.

Stupid test are being written. Crap tests exists. Reading this book to give me a mindset to approach the condition.


Not reading everything now. Just some parts.

Stupid test are being written. Crap tests exists. Reading this book to give me a mindset to approach the condition.


Not reading everything now. Just some parts.

I'm reading this book as a supplement for the book "The Language of Mathematics: A Linguistic and Philosophical Investigation". My main focus is actually on the chapter talking about "Discourse Representation Theory" or DRS, I might go through other chapters really quickly.

I'm reading this book at a supplement for "The Language of Mathematics: A Linguistic and Philosophical Investigation". My main focus is actually on the chapter talking about "Discourse Representation Theory" or DRS, I might go through other chapters really quickly.

I already gone through chapter 1 and chapter 2. The author give a good contrast between commonly known types of definition

I already gone through chapter 1 and chapter 2. The author give a good contrast between commonly known types of definition

This book is tough read if you don't remember your formal theory(specifically context free grammar), and it would be good if you are have some knowledge in Discourse Representation Theory(DRS). I got stuck on chapter 3 because the author starts to use DRS and Context Free Grammar to explain the theory of mathematics as a language. Need to brush up on DRS, and Context Free Grammar.