Editing Unix philosophy (section)

== Criticism ==

In a 1981 article entitled "The truth about Unix: ''The user interface is horrid''"<ref>{{cite news | last1 = Norman | first1 = Don | title = The truth about Unix: The user interface is horrid | url = http://www.ceri.memphis.edu/people/smalley/ESCI7205_misc_files/The_truth_about_Unix_cleaned.pdf | work = Datamation | issue = 12 | date = 1981| volume = 27 }}</ref> published in ''[[Datamation]]'', [[Don Norman]] criticized the design philosophy of Unix for its lack of concern for the user interface. Writing from his background in cognitive science and from the perspective of the then-current philosophy of [[cognitive engineering]],<ref name="interview">{{cite web|url=https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/transcripts/condon.htm|title=An Oral History of Unix|publisher=[[Princeton University]] History of Science}}</ref> he focused on how end-users comprehend and form a personal [[cognitive model]] of systems&mdash;or, in the case of Unix, fail to understand, with the result that disastrous mistakes (such as losing an hour's worth of work) are all too easy.

In the podcast On the Metal, game developer [[Jonathan Blow]] criticised UNIX philosophy as being outdated.<ref>{{cite news | title = On the Metal Podcast: Jonathan Blow | url = https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal/jonathan-blow }}</ref> He argued that tying together modular tools results in very inefficient programs. He says that UNIX philosophy suffers from similar problems to [[microservices]]: without overall supervision, big architectures end up ineffective and inefficient.