Pretty much all of them, insofar they were even valid concerns to begin with because many are not, or are at least hugely simplified, and a number of others have nothing to do with "Unix" in the first place.
The entire book is basically "let's compare the worst of 10 Unix systems to the best of 10 other systems, and then come to the conclusion all of Unix sucks and all the others are brilliant". Well, anything "sucks" in that way. And that is assuming that "best of 10 other systems" is accurate and not hugely biased and viewed with rose-coloured glasses.
I think this sentence probably sums up the book quite nicely:
> Will journaling become prevalent in the Unix world at large? Probably not. After all, it’s non-standard.
Which probably tells you all you need to know about the mentality of the authors. Nothing in any standard prevented anyone from journaling. It's just FUD.
The first journaling filesystem was introduced in 1990, in AIX, and then in 1991 in HP-UX. Both are Unix. Windows followed in 1993, Apple in 1998. This book is from 1994. This was more or less cutting-edge(-ish) stuff back then.
"Storing files" reliably has always been hard, on any system. "Unix can lose files" – well, yeah, just like any other system mate. Unix lead the way on improving that with journaling, and the book even acknowledges that in the paragraph before the one I quoted, and it's still whinging and whining and spreading bullshit FUD.
I'm not saying Unix is perfect today and I'm sure as hell not saying Unix anno 1994 was perfect. but a careful thoughtful criticism this book is not. The best part is Dennis Ritchie's "anti-foreword".
A book refuting all the bullshit in this book, even from a 1994 perspective, would probably be longer than this book. It's a classic case of bullshit asymmetry where flinging some nonsense in to the world takes almost no effort at all, but refuting it takes a lot more effort.
I’m pretty sure that if Freud were present, he’d point out the rage you’re feeling right now isn’t really about the thirty year old nerd satire book you’re commenting on, it’s about your relationship with your father.
The problem is that it's historical revisionism. It keeps getting posted on HN and taken serious (it was never intended as satire in the first place) and people think it somehow represents an accurate view of ... anything. It doesn't.
But the less said about my father the better, so maybe shrug.
I took it to be a satirical mishmash of end-user complaints and generalized bitching and moaning, pulled largely from a mailing list archive. Regarding the question of whether it was intended as satire, I'd observe that the copy I read so many years ago had a Unix barf bag pasted inside the back cover and I'm pretty sure the front cover featured the guy from Edvard Munch's The Scream.
If it represents an accurate view of something, it represents the fact that Unix at the time had some really eminent end users who found the operating system to be a major pain in the ass. I mean, you can say "those guys should have loved it, they just didn't know what they were talking about," but I don't see the point of it. I guess what I'm saying is that nothing about the book demands to be taken too seriously, and if you see someone doing that, you aren't exactly obligated to also take it seriously (or take them seriously).
The entire book is basically "let's compare the worst of 10 Unix systems to the best of 10 other systems, and then come to the conclusion all of Unix sucks and all the others are brilliant". Well, anything "sucks" in that way. And that is assuming that "best of 10 other systems" is accurate and not hugely biased and viewed with rose-coloured glasses.
I think this sentence probably sums up the book quite nicely:
> Will journaling become prevalent in the Unix world at large? Probably not. After all, it’s non-standard.
Which probably tells you all you need to know about the mentality of the authors. Nothing in any standard prevented anyone from journaling. It's just FUD.
The first journaling filesystem was introduced in 1990, in AIX, and then in 1991 in HP-UX. Both are Unix. Windows followed in 1993, Apple in 1998. This book is from 1994. This was more or less cutting-edge(-ish) stuff back then.
"Storing files" reliably has always been hard, on any system. "Unix can lose files" – well, yeah, just like any other system mate. Unix lead the way on improving that with journaling, and the book even acknowledges that in the paragraph before the one I quoted, and it's still whinging and whining and spreading bullshit FUD.
I'm not saying Unix is perfect today and I'm sure as hell not saying Unix anno 1994 was perfect. but a careful thoughtful criticism this book is not. The best part is Dennis Ritchie's "anti-foreword".
A book refuting all the bullshit in this book, even from a 1994 perspective, would probably be longer than this book. It's a classic case of bullshit asymmetry where flinging some nonsense in to the world takes almost no effort at all, but refuting it takes a lot more effort.