
In the beginning was the command line (1999) [pdf] - bookofjoe
https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Stephenson-CommandLine-1999.pdf
======
ackbar03
I'm guessing some on the hacker news crowd already know this but the author
neal Stephenson also wrote Crytonomicon which was the prerequisite reading
book for the PayPal mafia back in the days. I've personally only read his book
reamde but the accuracy in detail in the novels really reflect quite deep
understanding of the tech world including the shadier parts

~~~
fmajid
Cryptonomicon is OK, but far inferior to Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. I
think the latter is an incredibly inspiring vision of technology used for
good, as opposed to how today’s best and brightest are focusing their energy
into increasing ad click-through conversion rates by 3%.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Diamond Age was amazing when I read it in 2008. I couldn’t believe it had been
written in ‘95, given its vision of (what we call) 3d printers, Amazon Turks,
software mediated 1:1 relationships, etc. I imagine reading it today, it would
read as a likely near-future-history, but in 95 it must have seemed laden with
far-fetched original invention, both technological and societal.

~~~
Barrin92
the most salient insight from the diamond age is in my opinion the isolated
and fragmented nature of the internet and the extreme segregation into
cultural communities, when at the same time everyone was talking about how the
internet is going to connect everyone and erode all borders.

~~~
dllthomas
Reading some of that in the modern era was... uncomfortable but probably
valuable.

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ubermonkey
I read this when it was current. I am now old.

Stephenson had a great sideline in really deep-dive nonfiction pieces there
for a while (around the same time that Wired was experimenting with running
them, _in print_ ). It was a pretty great combination.

~~~
hudibras
I'm so old I bought this when it was published in paperback.

[https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-was-Command-
Line/dp/0380815...](https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-was-Command-
Line/dp/0380815931)

Edit: Amazon informs me that I purchased it on 19 June 2000.

~~~
non-entity
I always forget Amazon's been around that long.

~~~
smhenderson
Yeah, IIRC they were still just a book store back then with B&N competing
nicely with them. Seems like such a long time ago now!

~~~
hudibras
That same order from June 2000 included five other books and one Sega
Dreamcast game (Grand Theft Auto 2), so they must have had a few non-book
departments back then.

~~~
smhenderson
I guess getting into other media was probably the logical first step so makes
sense.

------
invalidOrTaken
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is
invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour
while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I
don’t know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don’t know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong
with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them
to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator
music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to
your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Speculative economists take note: abundance is hard.

------
dang
Many previous threads:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=In%20the%20beginning%20was%20t...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=In%20the%20beginning%20was%20the%20command%20line%20comments>0&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

~~~
bookofjoe
I figured a year was a decent interval...

~~~
9034725985
I think he linked it so new readers can see the older comments and get clued
in to the conversation. (:

I remember reading In the beginning was the command line back in high school.
I liked the comparison with cars. I'm a little sad I never got to use the BeOS
that the author so much likens to a batmobile (going from memory). This
article even has its own Wikipedia article
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line)

For new readers, I'd also strongly recommend "Mother Earth Mother Board" by
the same author, Neal Stephenson. In Mother Earth Mother Board, the author
writes about the fiber optic cables that connect us across continents.

Original:
[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

Previously discussed
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635028)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242682)

~~~
samman
>I'm a little sad I never got to use the BeOS that the author so much likens
to a batmobile (going from memory).

You may be interested in Haiku OS then... [https://www.haiku-
os.org/](https://www.haiku-os.org/)

------
sandymcmurray
I loved this essay, and own a paperback copy. I also loved his novels Zodiac,
REAMDE (a fast, fun read), and Anathem, which was a tough read at first, but I
ended up loving it. (I started the first novel of his Baroque Cycle but got
bogged down and never finished those ones.)

~~~
laurentl
If you read Zodiac, Anathem and (part of) the Baroque Cycle I assume you’ve
read his other books (Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, Snowcrash...). If not, lucky
you!

I discovered Stephenson with Anathem and I was hooked. This book doesn’t get a
lot of love it seems, maybe because it’s not Stephenson's usual cyberpunk /
near future sci-fi (and maybe because of all the made-up words and
history—there’s even an xkcd comic about it). But (SPOILERS) you gotta admire
a book that starts like _The Name of the Rose_ and finishes in a nuke-
propelled starship.

------
Aardwolf
In the very beginning, there were light bulbs and wiring panels...

~~~
Insanity
I guess you could go back a bit earlier?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine#Charles_Babb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine#Charles_Babbage's_difference_engines)

------
ai_ja_nai
splendid reading, an enlightening essay about society and operating systems as
a mediated experience methaphore

------
riazrizvi
Gates worked as a programmer in high school, so he was aware that the practice
of selling software was not new. IBM was a long standing company by that point
that made money writing software for businesses. The first example of a person
making money from machine instructions was Jaquard (1804) who encoded his
instructions on punch cards and fed them into weaving machines to create
pretty patterns. So graphics programmers came first.

~~~
kragen
IBM didn't sell software until the consent decree forced them to, and Jacquard
cards (or dobby patterns for that matter) are uncompressed graphics files, not
programs to generate graphics algorithmically. Many machines in the 1950s used
Williams-tube memory and drove additional visible CRTs from the signals, so
every program was a graphics program. But that was a century after Lovelace.

Jacquard and dobby patterns were generally created by employees of the loom
owner.

