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July 21, 2004

the social construction of Unix, C, and Linux

» posted in category: Social Construction of IS and IT , The Philosophy of Openness

From Unix's founding fathers:

"It is that interplay between the technical and the social that gives both C and Unix their legendary status. Programmers love them because they are powerful, and they are powerful because programmers love them. David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale, perhaps put it best when he said, “Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defence against complexity.” Dr Ritchie's creations are indeed beautiful examples of that most modern of art forms."

My emphasis in bold; couldn't have said it better. After all, we knew that coders and programmers are not "lone scientists". :)

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Authored by Mentor Cana at July 21, 2004 08:37 AM | TrackBack

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