Editing Unix philosophy (section)

=== Mike Gancarz: The UNIX Philosophy ===
In 1994, [[Mike Gancarz]], a member of [[Digital Equipment Corporation]]'s Unix Engineering Group (UEG), published ''The UNIX Philosophy'' based on his own Unix ([[Ultrix]]) port development at DEC in the 1980s and discussions with colleagues. He is also a member of the [[X Window System]] development team and author of [[Ultrix Window Manager]] (uwm). 

The book focuses on porting UNIX to different computers during the [[Unix wars]] of the 1980s and describes his philosophy that portability should be more important than the efficiency of using non-standard interfaces for hardware and graphics devices.

The nine basic "tenets" he claims to be important are

# Small is beautiful.
# Make each program do one thing well.
# Build a prototype as soon as possible.
# Choose portability over efficiency.
# Store data in flat [[text file]]s.
# Use software leverage to your advantage.
# Use [[shell script]]s to increase leverage and portability.
# Avoid captive user interfaces.
# Make every program a [[Filter (software)#Unix|filter]].