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Unix, the Living Anachronism

Published on: Saturday February 21 2009

"The Jolitzes believed that from its origins as a series of quick, if elegant, hacks, Unix had hardened into a series of unquestioned rituals for getting things done. Many of these rituals were fossils -- work-arounds for hardware that no longer existed. "It's amazing how much we were still tied to the past," Lynne says. "The physical machines had been hauled away, but elements of the operating systems are still being implemented in the same way." She believes today's Linux and BSD developers are carrying on that unhelpful tradition." "It's like they're doing incantations," she says. "They're repeating what they've been taught, and they don't know what it means."

What will it take to re-bury the rampaging Unix zombie horde?

This entry was written by Stanislav , posted on Saturday February 21 2009 , filed under SoftwareArchaeology, SoftwareSucks . Bookmark the permalink . Post a comment below or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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