[verisimilitudes]

That's interesting, because I also feel people don't appreciate computing history appropriately.

If you'd care to learn some real history, I suggest you read The UNIX-HATERS Handbook: http://web.mit.edu/%7Esimsong/www/ugh.pdf

With this book, you'll learn that UNIX and C are nothing admirable and have actually been responsible for successfully destroying much better systems and languages in the popular eye; languages including Lisp, APL, Simula, ALGOL, Smalltalk, and Forth all existed before C; systems such as ITS and Multics addressed concerns UNIX users still suffer under today.

Make no mistake, for all of RMS' admirable qualities, he's basically responsible for UNIX proliferating by copying it for GNU. You also shouldn't look at your modern BSD or GNU system and think this is what UNIX users used decades ago, because for all of their faults, GNU and BSD actually try to produce programs which work correctly and GNU goes much farther than several of the BSDs in this respect. The UNIX attitude is one of getting half the job done and leaving it at that.

In closing, UNIX has no philosophy. The UNIX philosophy is simply brand-named simplicity. The ideas of modularity and simplicity predate automatic computing and recorded history, and yet people will claim you're following UNIX if you write a program which adheres to these basic ideals. Further, those other qualities of this philosophy result in programs that aren't modular, simple, nor beautiful.

[bitofhope]

The Handbook is a fine document and any computing history fan worth their salt should read it, but it's hardly the best analysis of Unix in a historical perspective.

Blaming (or crediting, however you want to think about it) GNU for proliferation of Unix is anachronistic. RMS has repeatedly said he doesn't care for the design of Unix, but he chose it for the ease of implementation. GNU wasn't even bootable as a stand-alone OS before 1990s and certainly not production ready until Linux was. Using GNU utilities in proprietary Unices was popular, at least since the 90s, but I never heard anyone consider them a "killer app" for Unix.

[pjmlp]

I used to have a couple of PC World articles about Windows winning the Workstation market, until about GNU/Linux started to be mature enough to allow easy porting of commercial UNIX stuff into them.

Had Microsoft and IBM kept serious about their POSIX compatibility subsystems instead of a bullet point to win government contracts, and history would have played out much differently.

[pjc50]

It's certainly an interesting critique, but it also massively oversells itself and is totally lacking in self-awareness if you take it seriously.

Computing is absolutely full of widely deployed working technologies that enable people to get work done all day but that have rough edges. For every one of these, there is somebody saying that you should use <pet technology> instead. Usually with missionary levels of zeal. And yet at no point do they seriously address why people might have good reasons for adopting the allegedly inferior solution.

[msla]

> And yet at no point do they seriously address why people might have good reasons for adopting the allegedly inferior solution.

With an emphasis on "allegedly" sometimes. For example, C is hugely superior to Python in terms of machine efficiency. Does C support faster development cycles? That's right, you can write code that's practically as fast as tightly-optimized machine code! Does C prevent potentially catastrophic errors? That's right, you can write code that's practically as fast as tightly-optimized machine code! A lot of the True Zealots aren't quite as monomaniacal on a single narrow point, but the lack of ability to see a total solution is diagnostic.

So was ITS better than Unix? Not if you prioritize usability, support for application software, or ability to run on more than a single family of very expensive mainframe computers the world had begun to abandon by the time Unix hit its big growth phase. You can say similar things about LispMs, although they were more usable.

[de_watcher]

UNIX-haters handbook talks about some weird stuff that naturally felt out of use.

RMS worked on EmacsLisp.