Applying the Unix Philosophy
These philosophical principles aren't just vague generalities.
In the Unix world they come straight from experience and lead to
specific prescriptions, some of which we've already developed
above. Here's a by no means exhaustive list:
-
Everything that can be a source- and
destination-independent filter
should
be
one.
-
Data streams should if at all possible be textual (so they can
be viewed and filtered with standard tools).
-
Database layouts and application protocols should if
at all possible be textual (human-readable and
human-editable).
-
Complex front ends (user interfaces) should be cleanly
separated from complex back ends.
-
Whenever possible, prototype in an interpreted language before
coding C.
-
Mixing languages is better than writing everything in
one, if and only if using only that one is likely to overcomplicate
the program.
-
Be generous in what you accept, rigorous in what you
emit.
-
When filtering, never throw away information you don't
need to.
-
Small is beautiful. Write programs that do as little
as is consistent with getting the job done.
We'll see the Unix design rules, and the prescriptions that
derive from them, applied over and over again in the remainder of this
book. Unsurprisingly, they tend to converge with the very best
practices from software engineering in other
traditions.[12]
