Do you have any thoughts on his book 'The Art of Unix Programming'. Just curious as I have a copy but have not read it yet. It seems to have quite good reviews on Amazon.
No clue. Until you mentioned it, I didn't even know it existed. The topic descriptions and reviews on Amazon look interesting. I'm going to order a copy and read it.
It goes along with one of my convictions (based on decades of observation), which is: the single biggest factor influencing how software is produced (and therefore the characteristics of the artifact, which then determines usability, potential for being grown, and maintainability) is organizational sociology. That's a terribly long sentence, which simply means: the way software engineers interact determines how good their software will be, and what its future holds. future of the software will be. So as an example: Take a group engineers (good or bad), give them no management, unclear guidance, and a culture in which they don't work together. Even if they have the best books and training, and fabulous programming tools (modern languages like Rust and Ruby and design tools and great coding rules), the result will be crap, late, and unmaintainable. Take the same engineers, make sure they understand what problem they are trying to solve, create an environment where they can interact and work together, and management that creates schedules, resources, and communication to outside stakeholders, and the result will be fabulous. Even if all the have is a COBOL compiler, a file cabinet for source control, and the only coding rule is "use a felt-tip pen for commenting in long hand on the cards".
This is to say: all the talk about better languages, tools, methodologies, workflows (waterfall versus agile) actually matters little. What matters is corporate culture. If the culture is to foster engineering excellence, the product will be excellent. If the culture is to be cheap and meet the schedule, the result will be quick crap.
Speaking of that, there is another book about how to program, by the people who actually DID the programming that ESR talks about: "The practice of programming", by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike. I have it at home (hopefully not in a box in the basement, but on a bookshelf). Read it once about 15 or 20 years ago, and found the advice to be so good that it is self-evident. I think it will be interesting to read it back-to-back with "The Art of Unix Programming".