I liked the Frisch and Limoncelli/Hogan books. Nemeth less so. Adam On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 3:59 PM Alan D. Salewski wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 28, 2023, at 21:34, Dan Cross wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 8:38 PM Will Senn wrote: > >> I'm curious about the experience of those of y'all who actually used > them. Were there any early standouts and why did they stand out? > > > > This is not going to be popular, but... > > > >> Nemeth, E., Synder, G., & Seebass, S. (1989). UNIX System > Administration Handbook (5th edition is another fatty) > > > > This book gave me some terrible advice when I was very young and > impressionable. > > > > In there somewhere it says something about not doing something unless > > you're prepared to do it right lest one spend more time working around > > a work-around than one would have spent just doing it well in the > > first place. > > > > The conclusion is, of course, true, but the admonition ignores all > > sorts of externalities, like waiting users. And in some cases it could > > really lead to paralysis > [...] > > > Hopefully nowadays we have a better appreciation of the power of > > incrementalism; those grand plans for the perfect system rarely come > > to fruition. It's better to be flexible and make small, impactful > > changes along the way towards a better system, always being mindful of > > and tamping down encroaching entropy. > > > > - Dan C. > > Yeah, good or bad advice at just the right time can have quite an > impact. > > In the under-celebrated "Minimal Perl"[0], Tim Maher notes in the > last paragraph of section 5.8: > > In your own career, I'd advise you to develop an appreciation an > appreciation and an aptitude for both the /quick-and-dirty/ and > /elegant-and-formal/ styles of programming, and to cultivate the > ability to produce either kind on demand, as circumstances > warrant. > > > Seems obvious, in retrospect -- but of course many things do with > the benefit of hindsight. For me, that articulated something that I > sensed was the right way to approach things, but was contrary to > much of the one-dimensional advice I had received up to that > point. It pairs well with one of the "lesser tenets" noted by > Gancarz: "Look for the 90 percent solution"[1]. > > In my own career, I've found I can often use the quick-and-dirty > approach to buy myself time to afford the "detour to build the > tools"[2] that could not be justified (to others) up-front. And > nothing gets it done faster than a shell script. Five or ten scrappy > N-line shell scripts that get the job done sub-optimally, and > lacking any real thought toward usability or generality buy time to > build better tools (usually more, better-written shell scripts). And > sometimes a scrappy script is "good enough" (for years, even). > > -Al > > > [0] Minimal Perl for Unix People and Linux People > by Tim Maher > Forward by Damian Conway > Manning 2007 > p. 175 > ISBN-10: 1-932394-50-8 > > [1] The Unix Philosophy > by Mike Gancarz > Digital Press 1995 > p. 117 > ISBN-10: 1-55558-123-4 > > [2] [McIlroy78] The Bell System Technical Journal. Bell Laboratories. > M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson, and B. A. Tague. > "Unix Time-Sharing System Forward". 1978. 57 (6, part 2). p. 1902. > https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1899/page/n3/mode/2up > > Also quoted in ESR's "The Art of Unix Programming" > Addison-Wesley 2004 > p. 12 > ISBN-13: 9-780131-429017 > https://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html > > -- > a l a n d. s a l e w s k i > ads@salewski.email > salewski@att.net > https://github.com/salewski >