5 Unix design principles you've never heard of

Many people know the Unix design principles as “everything is a file” and “do one thing and do it well.”, but few know about dozens of others. As a note, these rules, like most engineering rules, do have exceptions, but in my experience the exceptions are incredibly rare. In this post, we’ll touch upon 5 Unix design principles that’ll supercharge your coding. In the following weeks, we’ll do a deep dive into each principle.

Code Faster

The first rule is my personal favorite. It comes from TAOUP (The Art of Unix Programming), the greatest book on fast coding and software design ever written:

Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.

This is especially true in 2021 where we can buy cloud compute.

I’ve personally witnessed lost sales, engineering years of time wasted, and a project team becoming the butt of many jokes because this simple rule wasn’t followed.

Where EXACTLY to separate code

Another rule from the TAOUP that teaches us exactly where…