Douglas McIlroy

1932– · American computer scientist, mathematician, engineer, and programmer

Topics: unix, software design, open source, simplicity

• Everything was small... and my heart sinks for Linux when I see the size of it.

  — Douglas McIlroy

• Word and Excel and PowerPoint and other Microsoft programs have intimate — one might say promiscuous — knowledge of each others' internals. In Unix, one tries to design programs to operate not specifically with each other, but with programs as yet unthought of.

  — Douglas McIlroy

• This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

  — Douglas McIlroy

• The notion of "intricate and beautiful complexities" is almost an oxymoron. Unix programmers vie with each other for "simple and beautiful" honors — a point that's implicit in these rules, but is well worth making overt.

  — Douglas McIlroy

• It's proof that open-source can breed monsters just like the commercial pros.

  — Douglas McIlroy