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In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
 
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In the Beginning...Was the Command Line (Paperback)

by Neal Stephenson (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
Price: £7.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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In the Beginning...Was the Command Line + Snow Crash + Cryptonomicon
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Product details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Avon Books (1 Nov 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0380815931
  • ISBN-13: 978-0380815937
  • Product Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.6 x 1.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 196,052 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
You may well ask what light cyberpunk maestro Neal Stephenson can shed on the subject of operating systems and interface design. He's better known for his novels: Snow Crash, a dystopian not-too-distant future of avatars, linguistic software viruses and rent-a-nukes; The Diamond Age in which Victorian values come a cropper of nanotechnology; and Cryptonomicon, his 900 page opus spanning the development of hacking from before Bletchley Park to a contemporary data haven in Southeast Asia, complete with an (imaginary, obviously) gay love scene in the woods outside New Haven involving cryptography pioneer Alan Turing.

No one could read a Stephenson novel and not recognise his frighteningly powerful grasp of social and political history, and of technology that underpins all his stories. Read the liner notes on Snow Crash and you'll realise this is a man who probably considers Apple's Human Interface Guidelines to be soothing bedtime reading.

In the Beginning...Was the Command Line gives Stephenson an opportunity to flex his own non-fictional muscles. Part memoir, part developer's history of operating systems, it trawls through CLIs (command line interfaces) such as MS-DOS to GUIs (graphical user interfaces), the then-as now--revolutionary Macintosh OS, and everything since: Windows 98 (note: purist Stephenson doesn't even consider this an OS), Unix and Linux.

By the end of his enlightening, exhaustive elucidation of these and other TLAs, you too may suffer the subject of one of the book's final chapters: "geek fatigue". Not to worry--if there's one thing of which you can be certain it's that Stephenson never takes himself, or his subject, too seriously, and anything that cites Dilbert cartoons and H. G. Wells as source material has got to be a giant step forward. --Liz Bailey

Review
"A powerful voice of the cyber age."--"USA Today"Stephenson is a literary visionary of the technological future."--"Seattle Weekly"In the network world of the silicon samurai Stephenson is a big-time."--"Cleveland Plain Dealer

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In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
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In the Beginning...Was the Command Line 4.3 out of 5 stars (10)
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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read although somewhat dated., 10 Jan 2005
By R. G. Milner "Kilkrazy" (UK/Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is an excellent book, a very entertaining and worthwhile read if you are at all interested in modern computer operating systems.

However, like all computer science books, the technological aspect of it has already dated considerably, reducing its relevance as a survey. This is of course inevitable in such a fast-moving field. I would be very interested to read an updated edition taking into account the current situation in the OS marketplace.

Stephenson primarily contrasts Windows(tm), Linux, MacOS and BeOS. Out of these systems, BeOS is basically dead, MacOS has undergone a sea change (to a considerable extent building on BeOS and Linux), Linux has grown in sophistication and user-friendliness, and Windows is... still basically Windows with some extra knobs on it.

The book should not be ignored, though. The fundamental issue Stephenson comments on - whether it's possible to control complex equipment through simplified interfaces - is never going to disappear. It's also an entertaining read simply for the author's wonderful use of language.

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17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not vintage Stephenson - a one-sided essay, 4 May 2003
By A reader (London) - See all my reviews
This book is not a history of operating systems, contrary to what the reviews and synopsis would have you think. Rather it is an essay about the sort of operating systems (e.g. Windows, MacOS, Linux etc.) that Stephenson likes and dislikes.

He clearly prefers the command line interface (where you type commands) to a nice user-friendly interface with icons and flashy graphics. He constantly uses metaphors to explain his ideas (such as Windows is a station-wagon, MacOS is a sedan, Linux is a tank, and the BeOS is a batmobile), though these metaphors are often ill-considered. For example, the above metaphor does not take into account that tanks are hard to drive, as is a command line interface hard to use except to "hackers" like myself.

There is some humour in this book - I utterly failed to find it, though my brother found it hilarious and kept quoting bits. Basically, the book is his reasons for using MacOS instead of Windows, and then switching to Linux. These reasons are not applicable to 90% of computer users, because they cannot use a GUI (graphical user interface like Windows or MacOS) competantly anyway, so would not be able to manage at all in Linux or BeOS.

Stephenson clearly is "the rarest of geniuses", who appreciates complex cultural and social issues that most cannot, as shown through his comments on Disneyland in this book, and basically all of "Cryptonomicon".

Hardened Neal Stephenson fans like myself should probably buy this book to judge for themselves. Anyone interested in computers should also read it, though (like me) they will probably not agree with it. All Mac users should read it to tell them what ignorant fools [sic] they are. Anyone interested in human culture and sociology will probably find some of it interesting. Other than that, you probably won'y like it, or just find it boring.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very well written, but a bit too short, 28 Dec 2001
This is an amazingly fast read, and it has a lot of thought-provoking views. It's just a shame it isn't very thorough and sometimes even superficial. The book covers more or less the entire history of Operating Systems and reads like a rollercoaster ride through computer history.
The book is a very interesting thought excercise, but it feels more like a Wired article that got published in book form. At the low price though, it's a tasty intellectual snack along the road, you can probably finish it in three or four commuter train rides.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars A one-sided picture froma jaded author.
I concurr with the previous reviewer (Not vintage Stephenson - a one-sided essay, 5 May 2003)

As a developer and reder of most things technical, my "time-off"... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Happy Techie

5.0 out of 5 stars Stephenson looks at some of the major OS developments
A very short book by Stephenson's standards, he manages to deal with a number of major operating systems from MS-DOS through Windows, Linux, MacOS and even BeOS. Read more
Published on 19 Oct 2001 by carl@cberry.prestel.co.uk

5.0 out of 5 stars Memorable for Free Titanium M1 Battle Tanks & the Hole Hawg
More of us need to think about this stuff, very light read though. Writes about the meta-metaphore of computing in the same vein as other mediated experiences steam rolling... Read more
Published on 4 Jun 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars This book blew me away
What a fantastic book! interesting look at 3 different business models for Software development a must read for the business minded geek I picked it up at 9 AM and had it... Read more
Published on 3 May 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars A thorough and funny analyses of the OS industy
This book is a must-read for anyone who works with computers and wants to know why things are the way they are. Read more
Published on 13 Jun 2000 by wannes.de.smedt@pandora.be

4.0 out of 5 stars Not just a history
at first glance one might think that this book is about the history of computers. Its not. This is socialogical study into why Microsoft are where they are, why users chose it,... Read more
Published on 23 May 2000 by pma99raf@sheffield.ac.uk

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mac vs Win debate reveals philosophical & cultural gems
Neal Stephenson tells (sometimes rants) his view of the Mac vs Windows vs Linux vs BeOS debate with his typical erudite and witty up-to-the-minute style. Read more
Published on 7 April 2000

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