xxviii Preface lence as givens, and, as ancient shamans did, display their wounds, some self-inflicted, as proof of their power and wizardry. We aim, through blunt- ness and humor, to show them that they pray to a tin god, and that science, not religion, is the path to useful and friendly technology. Computer science would have progressed much further and faster if all of the time and effort that has been spent maintaining and nurturing Unix had been spent on a sounder operating system. We hope that one day Unix will be relinquished to the history books and museums of computer science as an interesting, albeit costly, footnote. Contributors and Acknowledgments To write this book, the editors culled through six years’ archives of the UNIX-HATERS mailing list. These contributors are referenced in each included message and are indexed in the rear of the volume. Around these messages are chapters written by UNIX-HATERS experts who felt com- pelled to contribute to this exposé. We are: Simson Garfinkel, a journalist and computer science researcher. Simson received three undergraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia Univer- sity. He would be in graduate school working on his Ph.D. now, but this book came up and it seemed like more fun. Simson is also the co-author of Practical Unix Security (O’Reilly and Associates, 1991) and NeXTSTEP Programming (Springer-Verlag, 1993). In addition to his duties as editor, Simson wrote the chapters on Documentation, the Unix File System, Net- working, and Security. Daniel Weise, a researcher at Microsoft’s research laboratory. Daniel received his Ph.D. and Master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and was an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering until deciding to enter the real world of DOS and Windows. While at his cushy academic job, Daniel had time to work on this project. Since leaving Stanford for the rainy shores of Lake Washington, a challenging new job and a bouncing, crawling, active baby boy have become his priorities. In addition to initial editing, Daniel wrote large portions of Welcome, New User Mail and Terminal Insanity. Steven Strassmann, a senior scientist at Apple Computer. Steven received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Labora-
Contributors and Acknowledgments xxix tory and is an expert on teaching good manners to computers. He insti- gated this book in 1992 with a call to arms on the UNIX-HATERS mailing list. He’s currently working on Apple’s Dylan development environment. John Klossner, a Cambridge-based cartoonist whose work can be found littering the greater northeastern United States. In his spare time, John enjoys public transportation. Donald Norman, an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. and a Profes- sor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of more than 12 books including The Design of Everyday Things. Dennis Ritchie, Head of the Computing Techniques Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He and Ken Thompson are considered by many to be the fathers of Unix. In the interest of fairness, we asked Dennis to write our Anti-Foreword. Scott Burson, the author of Zeta C, the first C compiler for the Lisp Machine. These days he makes his living hacking C++ as a consultant in Silicon Valley. Scott wrote most of the chapter on C++. Don Hopkins, a seasoned user interface designer and graphics program- mer. Don received a BSCS degree from the University of Maryland while working as a researcher at the Human Computer Interaction Lab. Don has worked at UniPress Software, Sun Microsystems, the Turing Institute, and Carnegie Mellon University. He ported SimCity to NeWS and X11 for DUX Software. He now works for Kaleida. Don wrote the chapter on the X-Windows Disaster. (To annoy X fanatics, Don specifically asked that we include the hyphen after the letter “X,” as well as the plural on the word “Windows,” in his chapter title.) Mark Lottor, who has actively hated Unix since his first Usenix confer- ence in 1984. Mark was a systems programmer on TOPS-20 systems for eight years, then spent a few years of doing Unix system administration. Frustrated by Unix, he now programs microcontrollers in assembler, where he doesn’t have to worry about operating systems, shells, compilers, or window systems getting in the way of things. Mark wrote the chapter on System Administration. Christopher Maeda, a specialist on operating systems who hopes to have his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University by the time this book is pub- lished. Christopher wrote most of the chapter on Programming.
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