UNIX Haters-Handbook

UNIX-Haters Handbook, a Book Review

From its humble beginnings in 1969 as a quick way to get a game called "Space Travel" to run on a DEC PDP-7, UNIX has had its supporters and its detractors. Some of the latter group banded together on an Internet Mailing List called "UNIX-HATERS." That list has been cleverly turned into a systematic attack in book form. The UNIX-Haters Handbook is edited by Garfinkel, Weise and Strassmann, and published by IDG Books, 1994, ISBN 1-56884-203-1. Now available in PDF format for free download!

I found myself laughing out loud on the bus while reading it. I even described it to my wife as "fun reading" as opposed to "work reading." It is often cruel and sarcastic but it is difficult not to empathize with the frustration that many of the users have endured, as reflected in some of their chapter headings:

UNIX - The world's first computer virus
Welcome New User! - Like Russian roulette with six bullets loaded
Documentation? - What documentation?
Snoozenet - I post, therefore I am
Terminal Insanity - Curses! foiled again!
The X-Windows Disaster - How to make a 50-MIPS workstation run like a PC
csh, pipes, and find - Power tools for power fools
Security - Oh, I'm sorry, sir, go ahead, I didn't realize you were root
The File System - Sure it corrupts your files, but look how fast it is!

You learn more about someone from their enemies than from their friends:

Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and UNIX. I don't think that this is a coincidence.-----Anonymous

Anyone else ever intend to type rm *.o and type this by accident: rm *>o ?
Now you've got one new empty file called 'o', but plenty of room for it!" -----Dave Jones

Note: rm *>o removes all my files and redirects Stdout to the file o, while rm *.o removes only the files ending in .o. On most keyboards, * is shift-8 and > is shift-period, so this is a common typing error.

Paul Gobes