The Design Philosophy of UNIX

Several things have kept UNIX going strong even after 30 years. One of these is its portability, as mentioned earlier. One widely held opinion among its adherents, however, is that the most important thing that has kept UNIX on the cutting edge, when most other software that old is considered obsolete, is its design philosophy dictating how an operating system should work. Many people tend to think of UNIX as an extremely complicated, austere, and confusing operating system. But to seasoned users, UNIX is the ultimate example of the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) credo of software engineering. This enables savvy users to perform very complex tasks with rudimentary tools, as long as they tie together the right way. ...

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