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In the Beginning...was the Command Line |  | Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Harper Perennial
List Price: $10.00
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Seller: IM Global
Rating:  103 reviews
Sales Rank: 50997
Media: Paperback
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.5
ISBN: 0380815931
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.43
EAN: 9780380815937
ASIN: 0380815931
Publication Date: November 1, 1999
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Amazon.com Review
Neal Stephenson, author of the sprawling and engaging Cryptonomicon, has written a manifesto that could be spoken by a character from that brilliant book. Primarily, In the Beginning ... Was the Command Line discusses the past and future of personal computer operating systems. "It is the fate of manufactured goods to slowly and gently depreciate as they get old," he writes, "but it is the fate of operating systems to become free." While others in the computer industry express similarly dogmatic statements, Stephenson charms the reader into his way of thinking, providing anecdotes and examples that turn the pages for you. Stephenson is a techie, and he's writing for an audience of coders and hackers in Command Line. The idea for this essay began online, when a shortened version of it was posted on Slashdot.org. The book still holds some marks of an e-mail flame gone awry, and some tangents should have been edited to hone his formidable arguments. But unlike similar writers who also discuss technical topics, he doesn't write to exclude; readers who appreciate computing history (like Dealers of Lightning or Fire in the Valley) can easily step into this book. Stephenson tackles many myths about industry giants in this volume, specifically Apple and Microsoft. By now, every newspaper reader has heard of Microsoft's overbearing business practices, but Stephenson cuts to the heart of new issues for the software giant with a finely sharpened steel blade. Apple fares only a little better as Stephenson (a former Mac user himself) highlights the early steps the company took to prepare for a monopoly within the computer market--and its surprise when this didn't materialize. Linux culture gets a thorough--but fair--skewering, and the strengths of BeOS are touted (although no operating system is nearly close enough to perfection in Stephenson's eyes). As for the rest of us, who have gladly traded free will and an intellectual understanding of computers for a clutter-free, graphically pleasing interface, Stephenson has thoughts to offer as well. He fully understands the limits nonprogrammers feel in the face of technology (an example being the "blinking 12" problem when your VCR resets itself). Even so, within Command Line he convincingly encourages us as a society to examine the metaphors of technology--simplifications that aren't really much simpler--that we greedily accept. --Jennifer Buckendorff
Product Description
This is "the Word" -- one man's word, certainly -- about the art (and artifice) of the state of our computer-centric existence. And considering that the "one man" is Neal Stephenson, "the hacker Hemingway" (Newsweek) -- acclaimed novelist, pragmatist, seer, nerd-friendly philosopher, and nationally bestselling author of groundbreaking literary works (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc., etc.) -- the word is well worth hearing. Mostly well-reasoned examination and partial rant, Stephenson's In the Beginning... was the Command Line is a thoughtful, irreverent, hilarious treatise on the cyber-culture past and present; on operating system tyrannies and downloaded popular revolutions; on the Internet, Disney World, Big Bangs, not to mention the meaning of life itself.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 103
 The Resistible Charm of the Petit OS August 9, 2009
Valjean (Orcas Island, WA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Since you're probably reading this review on either a Window-based PC or a Mac, Neal Stephenson would like you to know you're being duped. First of all, using that insipid, inefficient, bulky and mildly ridiculous desktop metaphor to interact with your software is so ... unnecessary! Secondly -- and more importantly for the nominal thesis of the work at hand -- you shouldn't have put down any of your hard-earned cash to actually purchase the operating system (or "OS") running your cutesy, wussy, metaphor-based hunk of technology. (OK, the OS no doubt came "bundled" with the computer you bought, but Microsoft or Apple certainly took their cut.) Can't you see that a free, fast, and oh-so-efficient alternative exists -- namely, Linux?
OK, I basically spoiled the whole plot for you but now you don't have to plunk down ten dollars for this rather short work, even if you're a Stephenson fan. "In the Beginning ..." isn't a bad book, but is so frustratingly myopic that it borders on parody. I admit I kept reading it because Stephenson is a fiercely engaging writer, but this hardly compensates for some rather bizarre reasoning.
Still, Stephenson is obviously whip-smart and does pose an interesting question, if one that possibly only appeals to computer and/or design geeks (present company included): why *do* people pay decent coin for overstuffed and over-metaphor-ized operating systems when a free, fast, efficient alternative exists -- running on the same hardware, no less? And he begins well, likening the choice of operating systems facing a consumer to, say, car shopping. (Conveniently ignoring his ironic use of metaphor, Stephenson calls Linux in this context "a tank, given away for free.") His language and anecdotes are amusing and many passages are peppered with superb historical and cultural markers: comparing the "Saturnine" Northwest to the "Dionysian" Bay Area, for example. (My spouse, who has read most of the author's doorstop-sized novels, tells me these intellectual flashes aren't limited to his non-fiction.)
But for someone so obviously steeped in history and computing (complete with back-in-the-day tales of computer ticker tape and punch cards), Stephenson betrays an amazing ignorance of the economics related to both these areas. His effective answer to the question posed above is that computer users have been hoodwinked by Bill Gates (and to a lesser extent, Steve Jobs) by offering "mediated experiences" -- to the tune of billions of dollars. They're simply ignorant of the brilliant alternative. He doesn't appear to have considered that users actually *prefer* these systems, *like* the value they receive from Windows (or the MacOS) and are willing to pay for that value. His rhapsodies about Linux -- chapter-long descriptions of how to run XWindows, paeans to the glory of open-source software, the speed and precision of typing at a command line -- don't appear to consider that he's describing computing tools that *pre-dated* today's graphical interfaces and really only appeal to a small audience. Users found this interface wanting and have quite obviously moved on. Stephenson weirdly ignores this angle (DOS, for example, never gets a mention) and instead extols the beauty of Unix-based word processors like emacs and vi; both beautifully efficient, fast, precise -- and utterly obscure. (Your reviewer has used both extensively.)
Ultimately, Stephenson just can't understand why consumers prefer products he considers inferior. His attempt to convince them otherwise in this book is often witty and stimulating, but ultimately comically narrow (two, count `em, references praising an amazing ... word-counting program!) and even smarmy: a tourist waddling through Disney World taking a picture of a fake Main Street "clearly relates to the colossal success of (graphical interfaces)".
Read "In the Beginning ..." if you're a Stephenson or (already a) Linux fan. For everyone else -- especially a satisfied PC user -- I'd advise having fun with your inferior technology instead.
 Fun book on culture and technology May 22, 2009
John Goerzen (Kansas, United States)
"A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement."
- Neal Stephenson, "In The Beginning. . . was the Command Line"
What a fun read. It's about technology, sure, but more about culture. Neal takes a good look at operating systems, why we get emotionally involved with them, and why Windows is still so popular. He does this with a grand detour to Disneyland, and a hefty dose of humor. The above quote was from near the end of the book, where he imagines hackers creating big bangs from the command line.
He starts out the book from some anecdotes from the early 1970s, when he had his first computer class in high school. His school didn't have a computer, but they did have a teletype (the physical kind that used paper) with a modem link to some university's system. But time on that system was so expensive that they couldn't just dial in and run things interactively. The teletype had a paper tape device. You'd type your commands in advance, and it would punch them out on the tape. Then when you dial in, it would replay the tape at "high speed".
Neal liked this because the stuff punched out of the tape were, actually, "bits" in both the literal and the mathematical sense. This, of course, led to a scene at the end of the schoolyear where a classmate dumped the bin of bits on the teacher, and Neal witnessed megabytes falling to the floor.
Although the book was written in 1999, and needs an update in some ways, it still speaks with a strong voice today -- and is now also an interesting look at what computing was like 10 years ago.
He had an analogy of car dealerships to operating systems. Microsoft had the big shiny dealership selling station wagons. Their image was all wrapped up in people feeling good about their purchase -- like they got something for their money. And he said that the Linux folks were selling tanks, illustrated with this exchange:
Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
Bullhorn: "But..."
Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
That doesn't mean that Stephenson is just a Linux apologetic. He points out that the CLI has its place, and has a true love-hate relationship with the text-based config files (remember XF86Config before the days of automatic modelines? Back when you had to get out a calculator and work some things out with pencil and paper, or else risk burning out your monitor?) He points out that some people want to just have the thing work reasonably well. They don't want control -- in fact, would gladly give it up if offered something reasonably pretty and reasonably functional.
He speaks to running Linux at times:
"Sometimes when you finish working with a program and shut it down, you find that it has left behind a series of mild warnings and low-grade error messages in the command-line interface window from which you launched it. As if the software were chatting to you about how it was doing the whole time you were working with it."
"Even if the application is imploding like a damaged submarine, it can still usually eke out a little S.O.S. message."
Or about booting Linux the first time, and noticing all sorts of cryptic messages on the console:
"This is slightly alarming the first time you see it, but completely harmless."
"I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor. . .
"Microsoft Word, were devoted to features like mail merge, and the ability to embed feature-length motion pictures in corporate memoranda, were, in the case of emacs, focused with maniacal intensity on the deceptively simple-seeming problem of editing text. If you are a professional writer--i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed--emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish. For page layout and printing you can use TeX: a vast corpus of typesetting lore written in C and also available on the Net for free."
I love these vivid descriptions: programs secretly chatting with us, TeX being a "corpus of typesetting lore" rather than a program. Or how about this one: "Unix. . . is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic." Yes, my operating system is an oral history project, thankyouverymuch.
The book feels like a weird (but well-executed and well-written) cross between Douglas Adams and Cory Doctorow. Which makes is so indescribably awesome that I can't help but ending this review with a few more quotes.
"Because Linux is not commercial--because it is, in fact, free, as well as rather difficult to obtain, install, and operate--it does not have to maintain any pretensions as to its reliability. Consequently, it is much more reliable."
"what really sold me on it [Debian] was its phenomenal bug database (http://www.debian.org/Bugs), which is a sort of interactive Doomsday Book of error, fallibility, and redemption."
"It is simplicity itself. When had a problem with Debian in early January of 1997, I sent in a message describing the problem to submit@bugs.debian.org. My problem was promptly assigned a bug report number (#6518) and a severity level (the available choices being critical, grave, important, normal, fixed, and wishlist) and forwarded to mailing lists where Debian people hang out."
That should be our new slogan for bugs.debian.org: "Debian's interactive Doomsday Book of error, fallibility, and redemption."
"Unix is hard to learn. The process of learning it is one of multiple small epiphanies. Typically you are just on the verge of inventing some necessary tool or utility when you realize that someone else has already invented it, and built it in, and this explains some odd file or directory or command that you have noticed but never really understood before."
I've been THERE countless times.
"Note the obsessive use of abbreviations and avoidance of capital letters; this is a system invented by people to whom repetitive stress disorder is what black lung is to miners. Long names get worn down to three-letter nubbins, like stones smoothed by a river."
"It is obvious, to everyone outside of the United States, that our arch-buzzwords, multiculturalism and diversity, are false fronts that are being used (in many cases unwittingly) to conceal a global trend to eradicate cultural differences. The basic tenet of multiculturalism (or "honoring diversity" or whatever you want to call it) is that people need to stop judging each other-to stop asserting (and, eventually, to stop believing ) that this is right and that is wrong, this true and that false, one thing ugly and another thing beautiful, that God exists and has this or that set of qualities."
"The stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments carved in immutable stone--the original command-line interface"
"Apparently this actually works to some degree, for police in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV cop shows. When it's explained to them that they are in a different country, where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. Starsky and Hutch reruns, dubbed into diverse languages, may turn out, in the long run, to be a greater force for human rights than the Declaration of Independence."
"Unix has always lurked provocatively in the background of the operating system wars, like the Russian Army."
 A thoughtful look at perceiving the world January 2, 2009
M. W. Linder (Omaha, NE)
A thoughtful missive on how the interface between users and products, whether an old MG, Disney World, or computer software, reflects and affects our view of life and the world. Not being a programmer it was a bit dry in some of the sections on different OS options, the details of which seem to bother other reviewers. But since I took that subject to be the Macguffin used to make his point about perception, metaphor, and choice, and since I'm to ignorant to know better, those sections didn't bother me too much.
And having read most of his work it was interesting because it sheds light on some of my favorite scenes in his novels, Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash in particular, which made it enjoyable. And like the Morlock he is, he ends with a challenge to accept life or deal with it. It's a fairly short book to read, for me an enjoyable and interesting way to spend a couple of hours at the beginning of a new year.
Stick to the point, please April 27, 2008
Gregory Kennedy (Fayetteville, AR USA)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This essay is nearly 8 years old, and in dire need of an update. So in 2004 Grant Birkel set out to do just that, producing a set of comments called "The Command Line in 2004". It's freely available on the web, and I suggest you read that version instead of the (older) book.
As far as Stephenson's original writing: Wow, what a disappointment. I love his fiction, but this was a subject that needed much more grounding, and the essay doesn't have it - it's prone to offer ridiculous analogies, and often ditches the point entirely so it can lament McDonald's expansion into foreign countries and the popularity of the television show Cops outside American borders.
Let me try to distill his main argument: the GUI evolved on top of the command-line, and it allowed the computer to become much more accessible to the everyday user. However, the two major commercial OSes don't offer a way to get back to the command line in a useful way, and so "hackers" lose out on a lot of power and flexibility that they used to have over the machine. He praises Linux because it gives you the TTY and doesn't offer the hand-holding and useless features that other OSes do. Stephenson likens the GUI to Disney Land, where ideas and cultures pass through a filter that narrows down the world to a single presentation accepted by the masses. In choosing the GUI we give up our control so we aren't overwhelmed by choice. (OS X pretty much demolishes this premise by itself, as Stephenson readily admits today, but things were different 8 years ago so it's better to look at this in a historical context)
Now, this argument doesn't really hold up under close inspection. It's easy to formulate a counter-argument on any number of points, though the essay has a hard time sticking to one argument, so it's tough to see even where best to challenge it. I will only suggest that interface troubles plague every application and operating system, regardless of who developed it, and that the way in which software is built does not dictate how useful it will be.
I think the real trouble with this essay is one of viewpoint. Stephenson takes the position of someone who is computing just for computing's sake - he finds programming interesting in its own right, without a need to accomplish any specific task. So the most efficient way to do this at the time was the command-line interface, because you can be coding your function very quickly without having to delve into pages upon pages of window-opening code. (Incidentally this is largely a problem of library refinement: CLI programming is only easy because we have the C stdlib, and in 1999 GUI toolkits were still convoluted. Nowadays new tools make coding GUI applications almost as easy as the CLI, and some are even cross-platform!)
However, he's trying to foist this viewpoint onto all users, without allowing them the freedom to choose an OS to suit their own individual needs. It's almost as though he is insulting the users who want their PC to be nothing more than a tool to get their work done - those who like the simplicity of clicking emails in Outlook, who want to use the Start menu because it's fast and easy, or who think the Office paperclip is a handy feature. (Okay just kidding about that last one: nobody really believes that.) At times he's suggesting that people are simply ignorant of other operating systems, and if they knew more, they'd pick a "better one". In any case, needing less direct interaction with the PC isn't any indication of a person's general interest in complex things... we all give up options in some areas of our lives to make time for flexibility in others. Birkel's counterpoint here is especially relevant because he continually points out that the real value of any UI is how much it enhances our ability to accomplish tasks, not how much we can muck things up with it.
In summary: Don't bother with this one, unless you're highly interested in Neil Stephenson, operating systems in 1999, Linux zealotry, and anti-American Global culture. And even then, read the annotated version. I think Birkel's comments provide the grounding in reality that the original essay desperately needed.
geeks and nerds: break free from your gui cage February 2, 2008
R. Friesel Jr. (Burlington, VT USA)
A good way to think of this book: a treatise for kids that grew up in the GUI and getting them to understand the importance of proper syntax. On the shell. Because that's where the hotness is at.
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