In the Beginning...was the Command Line |
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In the Beginning...was the Command Line is a lengthy essay by Neal Stephenson which was originally published online in 1999 and later made available in book form. The essay is a commentary on why the proprietary operating system business is unlikely to remain profitable in the future because of competition from free software. It also analyzes the corporate/collective culture of the Microsoft, Macintosh, and free software communities.
Stephenson explores the GUI as a metaphor in terms of the increasing interposition of abstractions between humans and the actual workings of devices (in a similar manner to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and explains the beauty hacker feel in good-quality tools. He does this with a car analogy. He compares four operating systems, Mac OS by Apple Computer to a fine European luxury car, Windows by Microsoft to a station wagon, Linux to a free tank, and BeOS to a batmobile. Stephenson argues that people continue to buy the station wagon despite...
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