blackbelt_jones
10-20-2007, 12:58 AM
Wow. Linux is getting more amazing the more I find out about it. I'm super-impressed.
Also, I appreciate how friendly and nice you all are around here. Thanks for taking the time to post tips in my topic.
Then again, I've been told that helping people and quietly being simply better, etc. is just part of the Linux community tradition.
-Sortevik
Also, it's great fun to talk about this stuff with people who are actually interested. It's been five years for me, and my enthusiasm continues to build.
Here's a quote from Eric Raymond's remarkable book: "The Art of Unix Programming. Eric Raymond is one of the true philosphers of the opensource/free software movement. You can read this book online for free. It's not just for programmers, and while I've only read a fraction, I consider it far and away the best-written book on the subject of computing that I've ever seen. Elsewhere in the book, Raymond makes it clear that Unix includes Linux.
Unix Is Fun to Hack
People who pontificate about Unix's technical superiority often don't mention what may ultimately be its most important strength, the one that underlies all its successes. Unix is fun to hack.
Unix boosters seem almost ashamed to acknowledge this sometimes, as though admitting they're having fun might damage their legitimacy somehow. But it's true; Unix is fun to play with and develop for, and always has been.
There are not many operating systems that anyone has ever described as 'fun'. Indeed, the friction and labor of development under most other environments has been aptly compared to kicking a dead whale down the beach. The kindest adjectives one normally hears are on the order of "tolerable" or "not too painful". In the Unix world, by contrast, the operating system rewards effort rather than frustrating it. People programming under Unix usually come to see it not as an adversary to be clubbed into doing one's bidding by main effort but rather as an actual positive help.
This has real economic significance. The fun factor started a virtuous circle early in Unix's history. People liked Unix, so they built more programs for it that made it nicer to use. Today people build entire, production-quality open-source Unix systems as a hobby. To understand how remarkable this is, ask yourself when you last heard of anybody cloning OS/360 or VAX VMS or Microsoft Windows for fun.
The 'fun' factor is not trivial from a design point of view, either. The kind of people who become programmers and developers have 'fun' when the effort they have to put out to do a task challenges them, but is just within their capabilities. 'Fun' is therefore a sign of peak efficiency. Painful development environments waste labor and creativity; they extract huge hidden costs in time, money, and opportunity.
If Unix were a failure in every other way, the Unix engineering culture would be worth studying for the ways it keeps the fun in development—because that fun is a sign that it makes developers efficient, effective, and productive.
Now, I'm just an end user, not a developer, but Linux is probably the most fun I've ever had with my pants on. From my point of view, the fun in Linux is that provides endless opportunities for creativity. There is simply no end of ways to solve problems and accomplish tasks, and someone else will always have a better idea.
After you learn it, it becomes fun. It can also save you time and money. But first you have to learn it. The hard part comes first. The pain comes first, but is ephemeral. The pleasure (and the power) comes later, but never ends.
Also, I appreciate how friendly and nice you all are around here. Thanks for taking the time to post tips in my topic.
Then again, I've been told that helping people and quietly being simply better, etc. is just part of the Linux community tradition.
-Sortevik
Also, it's great fun to talk about this stuff with people who are actually interested. It's been five years for me, and my enthusiasm continues to build.
Here's a quote from Eric Raymond's remarkable book: "The Art of Unix Programming. Eric Raymond is one of the true philosphers of the opensource/free software movement. You can read this book online for free. It's not just for programmers, and while I've only read a fraction, I consider it far and away the best-written book on the subject of computing that I've ever seen. Elsewhere in the book, Raymond makes it clear that Unix includes Linux.
Unix Is Fun to Hack
People who pontificate about Unix's technical superiority often don't mention what may ultimately be its most important strength, the one that underlies all its successes. Unix is fun to hack.
Unix boosters seem almost ashamed to acknowledge this sometimes, as though admitting they're having fun might damage their legitimacy somehow. But it's true; Unix is fun to play with and develop for, and always has been.
There are not many operating systems that anyone has ever described as 'fun'. Indeed, the friction and labor of development under most other environments has been aptly compared to kicking a dead whale down the beach. The kindest adjectives one normally hears are on the order of "tolerable" or "not too painful". In the Unix world, by contrast, the operating system rewards effort rather than frustrating it. People programming under Unix usually come to see it not as an adversary to be clubbed into doing one's bidding by main effort but rather as an actual positive help.
This has real economic significance. The fun factor started a virtuous circle early in Unix's history. People liked Unix, so they built more programs for it that made it nicer to use. Today people build entire, production-quality open-source Unix systems as a hobby. To understand how remarkable this is, ask yourself when you last heard of anybody cloning OS/360 or VAX VMS or Microsoft Windows for fun.
The 'fun' factor is not trivial from a design point of view, either. The kind of people who become programmers and developers have 'fun' when the effort they have to put out to do a task challenges them, but is just within their capabilities. 'Fun' is therefore a sign of peak efficiency. Painful development environments waste labor and creativity; they extract huge hidden costs in time, money, and opportunity.
If Unix were a failure in every other way, the Unix engineering culture would be worth studying for the ways it keeps the fun in development—because that fun is a sign that it makes developers efficient, effective, and productive.
Now, I'm just an end user, not a developer, but Linux is probably the most fun I've ever had with my pants on. From my point of view, the fun in Linux is that provides endless opportunities for creativity. There is simply no end of ways to solve problems and accomplish tasks, and someone else will always have a better idea.
After you learn it, it becomes fun. It can also save you time and money. But first you have to learn it. The hard part comes first. The pain comes first, but is ephemeral. The pleasure (and the power) comes later, but never ends.