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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.

— Doug McIlroy Doug McIlroy (2003)

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More quotes by Doug McIlroy

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

Doug McIlroy (2013)

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

Doug McIlroy (2005)

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.

Doug McIlroy (2003)

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.

Doug McIlroy (2003)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Doug McIlroy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.