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Thomas Scoville
In the late 1980s, I worked in the advanced R&D arm of the Silicon
Valley's regional telephone company. My lab was populated mostly by
Ph.D.s and gifted hackers. It was, as you might expect, an all-UNIX
shop.
Needless to say, we made more than a little fun out of this. I mean,
come on: as if UNIX could transform him into a mastermind, like the
supplicating scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz." I uncharitably imagined
a variation on the old Charles Atlas ads: "Those senior engineers will
never kick sand in my face again."
But part of me was sympathetic: "The boss isn't entirely wrong, is he?
There is something different about UNIX people, isn't there?" In the
years since, I've come to recognize what my old manager was getting
at. I still think he was misguided, but in retrospect I think his
belief was more accurate than I recognized at the time.
UNIX colleagues were much more likely to recognize and play in a way
I'd never expect in the VMS shops, IBM's big-iron data centers, or DOS
ghettos on my consulting beat.
With UNIX, text--on the command line, STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR--is the
primary interface mechanism: UNIX system utilities are a sort of Lego
construction set for word-smiths. Pipes and filters connect one
utility to the next, text flows invisibly between. Working with a
shell, awk/lex derivatives, or the utility set is literally a word
dance.
Working on the command line, hands poised over the keys uninterrupted
by frequent reaches for the mouse, is a posture familiar to wordsmiths
(especially the really old guys who once worked on teletypes or
electric typewriters). It makes some of the same demands as writing an
essay. Both require composition skills. Both demand a thorough
knowledge of grammar and syntax. Both reward mastery with powerful,
compact expression.
You might argue that UNIX is as visually oriented as other OSs. Modern
UNIX offerings certainly have their fair share of GUI-based OS
interfaces. In practice though, the UNIX core subverts them; they end
up serving UNIX's tradition of word culture, not replacing it. Take a
look at the console of most UNIX workstations: half the windows you
see are terminal emulators with command-line prompts or vi jobs
running within.
Thomas Scoville has been wrestling with UNIX since 1983. He currently
works at Expert Support Inc. in Mountain View, CA.