the-art-of-unix-programing.md

Preface

Knowledge lets you deduce the right thing to do; expertise makes the right thing a reflex, hardly requiring conscious thought at all.

1 Philosophy: Philosophy Matters

1.6 Basics of the Unix Philosophy

1. Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
2. Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
3. Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.
4. Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
5. Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
6. Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.
7. Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debug- ging easier.
8. Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
9. Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.
10. Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
11. Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.
12. Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
13. Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.
14. Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.
15. Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.
16. Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.
17. Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.