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Comment by alfiedotwtf | Hacker News Reader

Books I'll treasure forever:

    - Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by Stevens
    - Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Tanenbaum
    - The Art of Unix Programming by ESR
    - Parsing Techniques by Grune and Jacobs
    - Applied Cryptography by Schneier

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> - The Art of Unix Programming by ESR

Yes. TAOUP has a lot of good content about Unix programming styles and traditions, much of it useful generally. ESR's writing style is a bit heavy / verbose / uses verbal flourishes, but if you can let that not put you off, the book is worth reading. I've read most of it. One of the good sections is about Rules (of programming in Unix, which are not really rules, of course, but informal guidelines developed over many years of experience by many people - ESR has sort of codified them, a thing he tends to do a lot :)

The Rule about separating the interface from the implementation is a good one. I've seen developers at even enterprise companies sometimes not follow it in practice.

> - Parsing Techniques by Grune and Jacobs

Just saw that there is a new edition of this book:

https://dickgrune.com/Books/PTAPG_2nd_Edition/

I'll second The Art of Unix Programming - despite the title, it has many broad programming and software architecture lessons, and "The Unix Philosophy" is applicable far beyond Unix.

I have a pretty negative opinion on ESR these days. I could find technical arguments about many aspects of his good pieces of writing, and much of his writing is not good. His abilities as a coder are not generally remarkable, either. But mostly I don't think he's a good person. I would probably not say "Don't read ESR", but I think it has to be "Read ESR* "

*but be aware that he's a polarizing figure and opinions of his merits differ

(and if you happen to have a differing opinion, please use the reply button instead of the downvote button)

I share your sceptical opinion about ESR, but I concur with the other commenters that The Art of Unix Programming is still worth reading. (In contrast eg to his thing about Bazaar vs Cathedral.)

The Cathedral and the Bazaar was not an excellent piece of writing, but it was sort of necessary at the time. It has served its evangelical purpose well, to the point where it's no longer necessary. Open Source won the day, in no small part due to ESR. (I think it vital to give my enemies their due praise).

TAoUP is a good book on the Unix Philosophy, but it's worth noting that the ultimate expression of these ideas (Plan 9) was a failure, and the 'everything is a file' metaphor is arguably incorrect. I hope I didn't give the impression that it was not worth reading, especially in the sense that there are few other good sources for that information (even using Unix is not likely to teach you much about its whys and wherefores). I just think that it should be read in the proper context, and that recommendations should try to include that context.

Yep.

And I'd bet that a lot of programmers wouldn't be working on and with Linux right now if they hadn't have read that book long ago.

Both of them changed my career path from Dos/Windows to Linux

Agreed on all points. Especially on TAoUP being a good expression of the philosophy---even if the philosophy is, of course, far from a silver bullet.

+1 for Parsing techniques. Excellent book.

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