IP: Netizens -- the book

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

The first review of Netizens recently appeared in Dr. Dobbs Journal
in the Nov. issue.


It's on page 103


Below is the review


from Programming Paradigms
by Michael Swaine in Nov. 1997 Dr. Dobbs. Journal


"I have been reading a pretty good book on the history of UNIX, Usenet
and the Internet. It's called `Netizens', and it's by Michael and=20
Ronda Hauben (IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997, ISBN 0-81850-7706-6).


=A0One of the things I like about it is the copious quotations from the=20
actual participants in the developments it discusses.


=A0For example, I learned what I take to be the true story of the=20
invention of the UNIX comman grep, in the words of Doug McIlroy,
for whom grep was written by Ken Thompson. I've heard several
versions of what grep stands for, but according to McIlroy, Thompson
was just collapsing the editor commands it simulated: g/re/p, or "global,
regular expression, print." It was McIlroy, incidently, who pushed for
the idea of pipes in UNIX, which one learns a couple of pages earlier.


=A0There are many histories of the Net, from the memoirs of participants
to dry academic reports to popularized accounts for mass consumption. The
Haubens have produced a readable but well-documented story of the=20
development of the Internet.


=A0They spent years working on the book, and really seem to have done their
research.


=A0Java book publishers ought to emulate them."






**************************************************
"Photons have neither morals nor visas"  --  Dave Farber 1996
**************************************************