This paper is about how the Unix programming environment is good and easy to use. The authors say that the paper is not an advertisement but the paper will introduce the new programming style and unique features in Unix system.
The authors introduce advantages of the unique Unix environments from three big categories, which are file system and input/output, and user interface, and avoiding programming. Moreover, they specify these tree categories.
From the File system and input/output, the authors show the superiority of the file system structure in the Unix system. They emphasize how the powerful to manipulate the directory as a file and other devices, too. These file manipulation, discrimination between devices and files, gives us simple programming environments in Unix system.
Secondly, from the user interface category, the paper shows the manipulation of the programs in Unix system. The easy way to run programs, filename shorthand, which is about wildcard (*, [¡¦]) usage, input/output redirection, which is possible to perform on other system but very difficult, a plenty of powerful tools, pipe (|), and small program size make more convenient to program on the Unix system.
Finally, the authors show running shell on the Unix system and its power that shell programs are inherently easier to understand and modify than conventional programs. In addition, the paper shows the actual statistics and current programming methodology.
The authors conclude that designing, coding, and debugging are easier because of these Unix programming environments and these solves the people¡¯s programming problems without additional effort and cost.
This paper was written in 1979, which is long time ago so the paper was a little bit off from current issues. All facilities that are introduced by the author were not really new for me and I felt it is a right argument but it is natural nowadays. Even though this paper was not about really new, it was very interesting paper and it made me to remind my low estimation of the Unix system.