Diomidis Spinellis, AUEB & TU Delft
Explore the timeless lessons of Unix’s evolution in a talk that examines its significant influence on modern computing. For over fifty years, Unix has been a cornerstone in shaping software technologies and development practices. This session will guide you through a historical narrative, illustrating key innovations from Unix's First Research Edition to modern FreeBSD releases, such as prototyping, portability, modular coding, and the importance of developer efficiency over machine time.
Discover the architectural philosophies embedded in Unix, such aggressive partitioning, composition, layering, and convention-based extensibility, as well as the strategic use of pipelines and filters for program composition. Based on extensive research and case studies, this talk is not just a technical retrospective but also a reminder of the enduring principles that continue to inform effective system and software development today. Perfect for developers, architects, and tech enthusiasts eager to enhance their programming ethos with proven, age-old wisdom.
Diomidis Spinellis, AUEB & TU Delft
Diomidis Spinellis is a Professor of Software Engineering at AUEB and a Professor of Software Analytics in the Department of Software Technology at TUDelft. In previous lives he has served the Greek Government as Secretary General for Information Systems and has worked (briefly) as an senior SRE for Google. He is the developer of the ai-cli-lib AI command-line copilot, git-issue, the Unix history repository, the CScout refactoring browser for C, dgsh, and other open-source software packages, libraries, and tools. His most recent book is “Effective Debugging: 66 Specific Ways to Debug Software and Systems”.
author = {Diomidis Spinellis},
title = {Lessons from Unix History},
year = {2024},
address = {Dublin},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = oct
}
