The Unix Programming Environment

For a technical book from the 80's, it is amazingly lucid and well-written. It pre-dates modern unix, so things have changed but much that goes unstated in newer books (for brevity) is explicit in UPE. (Plus, the history itself is illuminating.) It gave me a much deeper understanding of how programs actually run over computer hardware.

on HN, 2017

I remember The Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike as an excellent introduction to Unix shells and general Unix programming. IIRC, throughout the chapters, it has you build some kind of interactive command line music organizer, which really demonstrates how much you can get done with a few simple shell scripts.

on HN, 2017

Even though it is mostly review, reading code and seeing commands that K&R&P run has actually helped my workflow, code quality, etc.

on HN, 2015

Anything by Kernighan/Pike/Ritchie such as The C Programming Language, The Unix Programming Environment and gopl.io book are all concise and well written books with just exactly the right amount of material it seems.

on HN, 2017

But what was really a kind of aesthetic crack was The UNIX Programming Environment and The TeXbook.

on HN, 2022