

UNIX As Literature - ulvund
http://insecure.org/stf/scoville_unix_as_literature.txt

======
pqs
The point of view of the article is very personal, but it is true that UNIX
smells text, and I like this feeling when I'm using Emacs or vim, org making a
script with awk, grep and the rest of the family.

I'm not a programmer at all, I use the computer to do science, and I feel
quite comfortable with the UNIX toolbox. I don't know why, but it just sounds
right, even though it might be quite arcane. Yesterday I did, quite fast, some
nice figures using, basically, grep, awk and gnuplot, and a little bit of dc
to do some calculations. But it is true that this figure could have been done
with python, IDL or anything else.

The article point of view might not reflect reality, but I liked its love for
words.

~~~
rflrob
_Yesterday I did, quite fast, some nice figures using, basically, grep, awk
and gnuplot, and a little bit of dc to do some calculations. But it is true
that this figure could have been done with python, IDL or anything else._

True that you could have done it with python, or IDL, or dozens of other
tools, but I'd challenge you to do it with the built in stuff that comes with
Windows or MacOS <= 9. Those programs you mentioned are environments
specialized for doing things like making figures (among other things). I doubt
K&R would've said one of the main objectives of *nix is to make a system that
can easily create figures. Something that unifies all the things you mentioned
is that they are inherently text-based, while the OSes I mentioned are
inherently not.

If you're a polyglot, you'll notice that there are some things you like about
some languages, and things you don't like. So you might prefer to express some
kinds of thoughts in one language, and this is equivalent to using a different
(text-based) environment. But when you get down to it, you are expressing the
thought through the lens of a spoken/written language, each of which has its
own literature. Pictures, on the other hand, are fundamentally different, and
I'd be hesitant to call a sculpture a piece of literature (although it may
well be an incredible work of art). I'd be curious to know how many people in
the author's Unix shop were Art History majors.

~~~
pqs
Yes, I'm a polyglot (I work in English and French, I live in Catalan and
Spanish and I have fun in Esperanto). And sometimes I have fun trying to say
things that sound ok in one language in another one and the results are
usually quite interesting :-). I love words and I love to live in text mode.

