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What are readers saying about In the Beginning...was the Command Line?
| Reviews of In the Beginning...was the Command Line - Page 1 of 3 |
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A reader posted a review at .
(Language: English)
  
A little out of date but overall very interesting (and short).
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A reader posted a review at .
(Language: English)
easy english, easy to read. Just relax book !
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Olivier Berger posted a review at .
(Language: English)
Really amazing how 10 years later most of what he described the IT landscape (and the reasons so) still stand true. Great piece, and great propaganda for open source.
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A reader posted a review at .
(Language: English)
Go get this one. The technology described is a little dated, but the analysis is dead on. You can get this as a (free) PDF from his website. It's not what you think, yes he praises the command line, but this extends into social commentary. Very easy read.
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John posted a review at .
(Language: English)
Old news. A narrow perspective of the particular merits and flaws of the Operating System business, viz. Microsoft, Apple, GNU/Linux, and Be. A few nuggets of Truth among a couple of falsehoods, several misconceptions, and a liberal application of weird metaphors.
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A reader posted a review at .
(Language: English)
I have been meaning to read this ever since it came out and when I saw it at Powell's, I had to buy it. This is a 147 page essay about the development of the computer operating system. More appropriately, it is an essay on Neal Stephenson's experiences with operating systems over the years. He takes us to the beginning of his computing experience with teletypes and punch cards and command lines and brings us to the modern day OS war of Microsoft and Apple and Linux and BeOS. I think Neal's views on the different Operating Systems is summed up nicely in the second chapter of the book: " The analogy between cars and operating systems is not half bad, and so let me run with it for a moment, as a way of giving an executive summary of our situation today. Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them. There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery. The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed. Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable. Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger station wagons and ORVs. On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently. One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others. With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free. Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships. Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits. The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player. The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this: Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!" Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!" Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!" Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music." Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!" Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!" Bullhorn: "But..." Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?" " The whole book is available for free from Neal here: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html It was a quick and informative read and pretty much affirmed what I already knew or suspected about the OS wars.
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Mark posted a review at .
(Language: English)
A thoughtful missive on how the interface between users and products, whether an old MG, Disney World, or computer software, reflects and affects our view of life and the world. It sheds light on some of my favorite scenes in his novels, Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash in particular, which made it enjoyable for me. And like the Morlock he is, he ends with a challenge to accept life or deal with it. This book was a good way for me to spend a couple of hours at the beginning of a new year.
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Michael posted a review at .
(Language: English)
Nice review of the history I lived thru.
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Hal posted a review at .
(Language: English)
This is a fun, short read. While the author uses real-world examples as a metaphor for the tension between command line and GUI-based interactions with an operating system, it really seems the metaphor is really the other way. Stephenson provides rather objective commentary about Microsoft, Apple and the Linux movement, and their respective relationships. Given it was authored in 1999, reading it now provides some intesting historical perspective.
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| Reviews of In the Beginning...was the Command Line - Page 1 of 3 |
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