I don't know the counts of Unix and Linux servers. I do kno… - Douglas McIlroy

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I don't know the counts of Unix and Linux servers. I do know that my heart sinks whenever I look under the hood in Linux. It is has been so overfed by loving hands. Over 240 system calls! Gigabytes of source! A C compiler with a 250-page user manual (not counting the language definition)! A simple page turner, 'less,' has over 40 options and 60 commands! It's proof that open-source can breed monsters just like the commercial pros. Miraculously, though, this monster works.

Douglas McIlroy

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About Douglas McIlroy

Malcolm Douglas McIlroy (born 1932) is an American mathematician, engineer, and programmer, best known for having originally developed Unix pipes, software componentry, and several Unix tools, such as spell, diff, sort, join, graph, speak, and tr.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Malcolm Douglas McIlroy • M. Douglas McIlroy • M. D. McIlroy • Doug McIlroy

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Originators like Douglas McIlroy:

Ken Thompson Dennis M. Ritchie Rob Pike Joe Armstrong Theo de Raadt

Additional quotes by Douglas McIlroy

Word and Excel and PowerPoint and other Microsoft programs have intimate — one might say promiscuous — knowledge of each others' internals. In Unix, one tries to design programs to operate not specifically with each other, but with programs as yet unthought of.

The notion of "intricate and beautiful complexities" is almost an oxymoron. Unix programmers vie with each other for "simple and beautiful" honors — a point that's implicit in these rules, but is well worth making overt.

This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

I don't know the counts of Unix and Linux servers. I do know that my heart sinks whenever I look under the hood in Linux. It is has been so overfed b… - Douglas McIlroy

About Douglas McIlroy

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Additional quotes by Douglas McIlroy