The UNIX Operating System
Short & Sweet series — part 2
Following the COVID-19 crisis that requires me to stay at home these days, I use the free time to promote myself to the goal of expert Front End developer. As part of my learning process, I try to share once a week an exciting thing that I learn.
I hope this experience will help you and me to keep learning new things even during these difficult days.❤️
So today was a very busy day for me, but I made a decision and I am not going to give up now :)
It is doesn't matter from which filed we are, it is always good to stop and learn from our forefathers.
From a break like that, we can learn a lot of best practices on proper planning, module usage and philosophy of creating solutions.
While we work in a field where many times our work changes over time and the tasks we worked on disappear through endless changes, it is always nice to see examples of code that used on daily bases for almost 50 years.
Some interesting things that are talked about in the video are:
- What is UNIX Operation System.
- The history of programming.
- The gods of Computer Science.
- The philosophy of Computer Science.
- Pipeline.
- Modulizem in progrming.
Interesting people that sowed in the video:
- Ken Thompson: “The father of UNIX”.
- Dennis Ritchie: “The father of C language”.
- Brian W. Kernighan: “The father of Hello World”.
- Stephen C. Johnson: “The father of Yacc”.
- John R. Mashey.
- Lorinda L. Cherry.
The philosophy of Computer Science:
One of the interesting subjects that I mentioned earlier was, The philosophy of Computer Science, and I want to explain myself. As a “modern” developer we do not realize we are “leaning on the shoulders of giants”.
As a front end developer (and to be accurate a React developer) I used as my day to day work the Component methodology that React is built on. The methodology of planning one element as most perfectly it can be and reuse it in different places start in ancient Greece in the Architecture. What programming added to the topic, that in architecture can’t do, is back-compatibility.
You can read more about the subject in the preface of “The UNIX Programming Language” or in the “Unix philosophy” entry in Wikipedia that is mentioned at the end of this article.
“Even though the UNIX system introduces a number of innovative programs and techniques, no single program or idea makes it work well. Instead, what makes it effective is the approach to programming, a philosophy of using the computer. Although that philosophy can’t be written down in a single sentence, at its heart is the idea that the power of a system comes more from the relationships among programs than from the programs themselves. Many UNIX programs do quite trivial things in isolation, but, combined with other programs, become general and useful tools.”
The UNIX Programming Environment.
** Two interesting facts are that UNIX actually was added to the Oxford dictionary and the other one is that you can notice there is quite a lot of women in the video.
Linke to other articles from this series:
Final Words
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and learned new things.
If you like this post, I would appreciate applause and sharing :-)
If you have something to add or change I would love to hear ❤️
Who Am I?
My name is Michal Porag. I am a Full-Stack Developer working at Skillset and a Computer Science student at The Open University.
You can contact or follow me:
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Resources
- Kernighan, Brian; Pike, Rob (1984) The UNIX Programming Environment. Prentice-Hall.
- Kernighan, Brian; Ritchie, Dennis (1988). The C Programming Language (2 ed.). Prentice-Hall.Unix philosophy.
- Unix philosophy entry, Wikipedia.
- Unix, Oxford item.
