The Collapse of the Unix Philosophy
Everyone should, at some point, read The Unix-Haters Handbook. A great deal of it is outdated or simply wrong, but it does have a running theme of a prediction that has largely been borne out: people assuming that all Unix&#x27;s flaws are actually virtues and that if you don&#x27;t think so, then you Just Don&#x27;t Get It.<p>It&#x27;s not hard to see how this happened: since pretty much all computers that people normally interact with are either running Windows or a Unix-like system, it has set up a dichotomy in people&#x27;s minds. When the Unix-Haters Handbook was released, there were still other operating systems which could have a plausible claim to being better, but they have all faded away, leaving only these two. And since the &quot;Real Hackers&quot; prefer Unix, Unix and all its decisions must be the right ones.<p>Unix is great, but people need to be more realistic about its shortcomings instead of mindlessly repeating mantras about &quot;The Unix Way&quot; without critical examination.