The Art Of Unix Programming ---part 1

(i) Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather

than complicate old programs by adding new features.
(ii) Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet
unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid
stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.
(iii) Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally
within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.
(iv) Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even
if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you’ve finished using them.

He later summarized it this way (quoted in A Quarter Century of Unix [Salus]):
This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because

that is a universal interface.

1. Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
2. Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
3. Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.
4. Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
5. Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
6. Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing
else will do.
7. Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.
8. Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
9. Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.
10. Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
11. Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.
12. Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
13. Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.
14. Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.
15. Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.
16. Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.
17. Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.

A software system is transparent when you can look at it and immediately understand what it is
doing and how. It is discoverable when it has facilities for monitoring and display of internal state
so that your program not only functions well but can be seen to function well.

• Everything that can be a source- and destination-independent filter should be one.
• Data streams should if at all possible be textual (so they can be viewed and filtered with standard
tools).
• Database layouts and application protocols should if at all possible be textual (human-readable
and human-editable).
• Complex front ends (user interfaces) should be cleanly separated from complex back ends.
• Whenever possible, prototype in an interpreted language before coding C.
• Mixing languages is better than writing everything in one, if and only if using only that one is
likely to overcomplicate the program.
• Be generous in what you accept, rigorous in what you emit.
• When filtering, never throw away information you don’t need to.
• Small is beautiful. Write programs that do as little as is consistent with getting the job done.