The Art of UNIX Programming

Preface

Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.

—Neal Stephenson

There is a vast difference between knowledge and expertise. Knowledge lets you deduce the right thing to do; expertise makes the right thing a reflex, hardly requiring conscious thought at all.

This book has a lot of knowledge in it, but it is mainly about expertise. It is going to try to teach you the things about Unix development that Unix experts know, but aren’t aware that they know. It is therefore less about technicalia and more about shared culture than most Unix books—both explicit and implicit culture, both conscious and unconscious traditions. It is not a ’how-to’ book, it is a ’why-to’ book.

The why-to has great practical importance, because far ...