Re: [TUHS] Ratfor revived!

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1756 bytes --]

On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:40 PM Arnold Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:


>  "Software Tools" was, for me, the most influential
> programming book that I ever read.  I don't think there's a better
> book to convey the "zen" of Unix.
>

+1.

Jez Higgins is in the process of rewriting _Software Tools in Pascal_ into
C++ in a project called "stinc++".  His blog index is at <
https://www.jezuk.co.uk/tags/software-tools-in-c++.html> and the repo is at
<https://github.com/jezhiggins/stiX/>.  He's up through uniq in Chapter 4
so far.

He writes: "I first found Software Tools in Pascal a bit over 20 years ago,
hidden in amongst old VAX manuals in the library of the company where I
worked at the time. Unusually for a technical book, Software Tools in
Pascal has a terrific narrative. It starts with a tiny task – copy
everything from the console input to the console output – and presents the
correspondingly tiny program. Step by step, program by program, you arrive
at the end of the book with an ex-like line editor, a roff-style print
formatter, and a macro processor. En route, you take in filtering, file
archiving, sorting, and regular expressions. Each incremental step seems so
logical and the code presented is so clear, that you just want to keep
reading. Chunks of code in a book can be rather tedious, but Kernighan and
Plauger’s is a joy. The lessons imparted on simplicity, clarity,
efficiency, on tools and the Unix philosophy, in common sense, how each
decision affects the finished program – well, they are at the core of what
we do, and how we should think about programming.  Your mind can only be
blown once, but I re-read bits of this book often to remind myself of the
feeling it gave me."

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2939 bytes --]