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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
friend suggested a read, with a link to the essay online. it's a long one, which i'm about halfway through, so i'm adding it to the book tally. out of date, for sure, but i'm enjoying it nonetheless and will seek out the updated response when i'm done.
An interesting read, and then a very dull read. Stephenson is very articulate about how Operating systems work and very clear in his metaphors and descriptions of their differences. He is very dull about Unix and Linux though. FAR too much detail for the average reader, far too little for the expert.
Interesting to see the things that make this dated now (written in 1999). The first two chapters make this a worthwhile read today, but skip the stuff on Linux.
Interesting to see the things that make this dated now (written in 1999). The first two chapters make this a worthwhile read today, but skip the stuff on Linux.
This was a cool little book. It is dated but does give an interesting analysis of command line computing. I had a little bit of a hard time following it, even though I am in IT. But it was worthwhile because the metaphorical language he uses is appropriate and he makes some very interesting analysis on Americans and how we computer.
I was curious if Mr Stephenson ever wrote non fiction - and the answer was he had. This book. Nominally about Windows, Mac and Linux. Its a decent primer on the state of the world cicra 1999. He tends to gloss certain things and is far to in love with BeOS but overall a quick, fun read that further articulates on why I dislike Macs so much
A whole bunch of fun vignettes from one of my favorite authors.
Neal Stephenson, a guy with no small degree of technical knowledge when it comes to computers, published this essay/book in 1999, at a time when the Internet was old but the World Wide Web was new (and changing everything), and when Apple was having its second Steve Jobs halcyon, on the verge of launching iTunes, the iPod, and creating the kind of retail tsunami from what Stephenson would derisively call "hermetically sealed" operations systems.
And for all this, what we get from "In the Beginning...Was the Command Line" is a wandering manifesto from a guy who disdains Windows, had his heart broken by Mac (after a disastrous hard drive crash) and fell in love with Unix so hard that you kind of wonder why he doesn't just marry it.
The worst part is that throughout this book< Stepehenson shows himself not as a knowledgeable tech guy with the inside track on a great alternative to the two big OSs on the market. Rather, he comes off as a guy who is merely pining for the good old days when computers were arcane, required guys who were both wizards and mechanics to make them run properly, and who enjoyed a goodly deal of power from all that. And if not power, at least the smug self-satisfaction in knowing that the whole world ran on machines that needed nerds like him to keep in proper order.
And you get that maybe Stephenson senses what is coming, and this is his last, spasmic love letter to a tradition wherein the only real way to use your computer, the only way that is respectable, the only way that doesn't just reduce you to some kind of simpering prole, is to know how to write code from the ground up. And since Windows and Mac doesn't really allow you to do that as openly as a guy like Stephenson might want, Unix in general, and Linux in particular, has become the One True Way.
Too bad the rest of you confused children just don't see it yet, his book seems to say, and it both pats us on the head for not getting the message while simultaneously spitting in our Starbucks for being too stupid to care. After a while, you get the feeling that if you're going to endure this level of sly condescension, you might as well hang out at a comic shop or something.
What Stephenson seems to miss is that for a lot of people, computers have simply become another retail product that we use on the terms dictated by the manufacturer. And why? Because we mostly need computers to do six to eight things for us. We don't really care how it all works under the hood. We just need out office/internet/YouTube/game/music machines to work in a way that makes us feel comfortable. And all the eye-rolling comparisons to the vapid, fake authenticity to DisneyWorld won't do a damned thing to change that.
And for all this, what we get from "In the Beginning...Was the Command Line" is a wandering manifesto from a guy who disdains Windows, had his heart broken by Mac (after a disastrous hard drive crash) and fell in love with Unix so hard that you kind of wonder why he doesn't just marry it.
The worst part is that throughout this book< Stepehenson shows himself not as a knowledgeable tech guy with the inside track on a great alternative to the two big OSs on the market. Rather, he comes off as a guy who is merely pining for the good old days when computers were arcane, required guys who were both wizards and mechanics to make them run properly, and who enjoyed a goodly deal of power from all that. And if not power, at least the smug self-satisfaction in knowing that the whole world ran on machines that needed nerds like him to keep in proper order.
And you get that maybe Stephenson senses what is coming, and this is his last, spasmic love letter to a tradition wherein the only real way to use your computer, the only way that is respectable, the only way that doesn't just reduce you to some kind of simpering prole, is to know how to write code from the ground up. And since Windows and Mac doesn't really allow you to do that as openly as a guy like Stephenson might want, Unix in general, and Linux in particular, has become the One True Way.
Too bad the rest of you confused children just don't see it yet, his book seems to say, and it both pats us on the head for not getting the message while simultaneously spitting in our Starbucks for being too stupid to care. After a while, you get the feeling that if you're going to endure this level of sly condescension, you might as well hang out at a comic shop or something.
What Stephenson seems to miss is that for a lot of people, computers have simply become another retail product that we use on the terms dictated by the manufacturer. And why? Because we mostly need computers to do six to eight things for us. We don't really care how it all works under the hood. We just need out office/internet/YouTube/game/music machines to work in a way that makes us feel comfortable. And all the eye-rolling comparisons to the vapid, fake authenticity to DisneyWorld won't do a damned thing to change that.
This did not age well.
Spot on concerning themes but dead wrong on the power of Microsoft, the death of Apple and the longevity of BeOS.
Spot on concerning themes but dead wrong on the power of Microsoft, the death of Apple and the longevity of BeOS.
funny
informative
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced