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The Art of UNIX Programming (The Addison-Wesley Professional Computng Series)

Amazon.com Price:  $43.09 (as of 25/04/2019 22:54 PST- Details)

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Description

This text reveals the software design secrets of the original Unix designers, showing how they produce software that is fast, portable, reuseable, modular and long-lived. Luminaries including Brian Kernighan, David Korn and Henry Spencer contribute to the book.
Unix ranks a few of the great engineering accomplishments of the last half of the twentieth century, and its heir–Linux–seems already imposing and still on its way to achieving its full potential. Eric S. Raymond argues in The Art of UNIX Programming that the excellence of Unix derives as much from the truth that it was (and continues to be) a community effort as from the truth that numerous smart people have worked to design and build it. Raymond, best known as the writer of the open-source manifesto The Cathedral and the Bazaar, says in his preface that it is a “why-to” book, quite than a “how-to” book. It aims to show new Unix programmers why they must work under the old “hacker ethic”–embracing the principles of good software design for its own sake and of code-sharing.

That said, an excessive amount of valuable practical information appears in this book. Very little of it is in the form of code; most of the practical material takes the form of case studies and discussions of aspects of Unix, all aimed at determining why particular design characteristics are good. In many cases, the people who did the work in the first place make guest appearances and provide an explanation for their thinking–an invaluable resource. This book is for the deep-thinking software developer in Unix (and perhaps Linux in particular). It shows how to fit into the long and noble tradition, and how to make the software work right. –David Wall

Topics covered: Why Unix (the term being defined to include Linux) is the way it is, and the people who made it that way. Statement from Ken Thompson, Steve Johnson, Brian Kernighan, and David Korn enables readers to understand the thought processes of the creators of Unix.

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