[jcranmer]

> However I think it still has a valuable lesson that many, particularly young CS students, would benefit from: Unix is not the perfect fundamental model for computing. C is not the gospel.

The problem is, this book doesn't actually motivate that lesson. Instead, it spends a lot of its time sniping rather than arguing for why the entire philosophy is perhaps misguided or outright wrong. And sometimes, even the snipe targets are pretty idiotic: when complaining about C++ syntax, for example, the target isn't the incomprehensible nature of template rules [1], but one C++ compiler doesn't lex //* correctly.

[1] I'm not sure anyone actually understands how name lookups work when templates are in play. Instead there's a lot of guesswork and don't-shadow-names-if-it-might-matter going on.

[darkpuma]

> "The problem is, this book doesn't actually motivate that lesson. Instead, it spends a lot of its time sniping"

Yes but that sniping does a good job of deconstructing the historical revisionism that Unix was some beautifully architected thing, rather than something that's become less shit over time.

[int_19h]

> I'm not sure anyone actually understands how name lookups work when templates are in play

All you really need to figure out for that is what a "dependent name" is. And that has a very straightforward definition.

[pushpop]

I thought The UNIX Haters Handbook predated C++ templates?