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 Art of Unix Programming (2003)

Source: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html

From the "Basics of the Unix Philosophy" chapter (2003).

Topics: software design, unix