Rating: 
Summary: In the Begining Neal was a novelist. . .
Review: "In the Beginning was the Command line" by Neal Stephenson. is a rant about how non-command line users are just like movie fans who accept Disney's interpretation of Snow White or Peter Pan.It is all somewhat insulting. As I suppose it is intended to be. As with "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Pirsig or "Psalms" by C.S. Lewis, the work tells us more about the author then the subject. I'll admit that it is an interesting quick read. I laughed. The antidotes are pure Neal. And worth the read. It is clearer now the-the journey he took between "Diamond Age" and "Cryptonomicon." Neal's basic thesis is that by giving up the command line the users has given up the power of the pc to someone else's judgment (the OS). And that judgment might be incorrect and sure as hell is flawed. What Neal does not consider is that it is still possible to be an intelligent pc user and not be a hacker. Just because you do not use the command line does not mean you can be lumped into the non-reading category of literate Americans.
Consider the following, what if computers themselves take the next step? When Hal 9000 descends upon mankind it will probably not appreciate Joe Smo having command line access. Indeed, what if your main way to interface with a pc is not even visual - such as person who is blind using speech software to interact with a pc? The way a user interfaces with a computer is less important then the output. Can said person find the files he/she wanted? Who cares how the computer functions per se, as long as it gets the job done. Computers are tools of the mind. What is more important about computers is how they are applied not how they are interfaced. Point taken Neal, I am not an alpha geek. As much as I love your work, ya, ok, whatever. Go back to writing novels.
Rating: 
Summary: 7 stars
Review: whoever thinks this is a book about OS needs to think again or ask for some help...
Rating:
Summary: Neal Stephenson Brings Order To Chaos
Review: There are books, song lyrics, TV Shows and movies that give us a vocabulary for phenomena we all recognize, but don't have a name for. A lot of the time they're just simple pop-culture references to a feeling or someone's behavior, but they're useful because they give us a shorthand to identify things that happen in our daily lives. If you spend any time on a daily basis with computers, this is just such a book.
When I first read it a couple of years ago I thought it was an entertaining read. But in the intervening years I find myself coming back to Stephenson's method of defining the differences between operating systems, and their underlying philosophies on an almost weekly basis. It has influenced my thinking to such an extent that after cleaning out my local bookstore's meager stock of the book, I turned to Amazon for another 5 copies to distribute to friends so that we can all speak the same language. I can't guarantee in a forum as big as Amazon that everyone will like it, clearly from the other reviews there are people who find it superficial. But what some might call superficial means 'accessable' to me, and no one seems to dispute that its at least entertaining. But beyond that there is some serious thought. Several operating systems are compared and evaluated, not by dry operating benchmarks but by assessing their philosophies, objectives and success or failure. The good as well as the bad of Microsoft Windows, is discussed enough that you'll hear the almost knee-jerk criticisms of Microsoft that exist at both ends of the techinical proficiency spectrum differently since you will also have a sense of the relative strengths and weaknesses of its competitors. Most people live their lives in one operating system (or if you have a Mac, Windows is likely to be thrust upon you and you might know a second if you don't dig in your heels), and most people knock the one system they know. As entertaining as it is, the real value of the book to the general reader or tech novice is that they'll be able to speak more thoughtfully and broadly on issues that even most professional techs don't trouble themselves to investigate.
Rating:
Summary: Half-baked, inaccurate, but entertaining and infuriating
Review: This is a book that might have been written by the hero of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." It's entertaining and you really want to like it (and I do like Stephenson's fiction), but it's so infuriatingly inaccurate, I kept yelling at my wife "this is all wrong!" Not his opinions, in general I have no problems with those. It's all the facts that he seems to be completely indifferent to.
I would have stopped about a third of the way through but I figured he MUST be going someplace where all this would make sense. It doesn't. Here's a fairly typical quote: "...during this century, intellectualism failed and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common folk agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir." (p. 53)
Well, intellectualism may well be useless for Disney, which is what he's discussing here, but to call Hitler and Lenin intellectuals is completely wrong. Naziism was, in fact, the first truly mass political movement, and it was precisely a call to tradition, to "blood and folk," a return to the glory of Germany's mythological past, of Siegfried and Fredrick Barbarossa.
Early in the Russian revolution, the call went out to kill everyone who didn't have calluses on their hands - everyone who was an intellectual, in other words, and not a worker. The one recognizable artistic legacy of Lenin, Soviet Realism, is the most anti-intellectual artistic style of the 20th century (aside from the "big-eyed waifs on black velvet" school of the American 70's.) You can accuse Lenin and Hitler of a lot of stuff, but they were NEVER soft on intellectuals. He proposes this amusing metaphor that Mac is a Euro-styled sedan, Windows is a big, lumbering SUV, and LINUX is a high-tech M1 tank that never breaks down, gets wonderful mileage, and is free.
I'm fine with the Mac and Windows metaphors. LINUX might be a sort of a tank, but it's more like a tank that comes as an enormous box of erector set pieces, lincoln logs, and tinker toy parts, and it's up to you to figure out which pieces you need and how they go together. There are lots of people to ask, at least if you have another computer that's stable enough to get out onto the Internet to ask questions like "how do I figure out what UART chip my serial port card uses?" He attempts to argue that Microsoft's fixation with operating systems is somehow unnatural, that an OS, which doesn't really "exist" except as a string on ones and zeroes on your computer disk, is somehow inherently free, and it's immoral to charge people money for it. In fact, he seems to think Gates invented the idea of selling software. "A string of ones and zeroes was not a difficult thing for Bill Gates to distribute, once he'd thought of the idea. The hard part was selling it - reassuring customers that they were actually getting something in return for their money." (This is funny partly because one of the constant refrains of the anti-Gates crowd is that 'Microsoft never invented anything, they just stole it.')
Microsoft didn't invent the idea of selling software, and they certainly didn't invent the concept of an OS as a product; Digital Research developed CP/M long before, which was used on a dozen different brands of mutually incompatible hardware, like Kaypros, and Wordstar predates DOS by years. In fact, Gates' first product wasn't an OS at all, it was an elegant implementation of the programming language BASIC. "The operating system market is a death trap, a tar pit, a slough of despond." (p.40) This ignores, of course, that the vast Microsoft fortunes have come precisely from the sale of operating systems, and the leverage which this firehose of cash gave them to develop desktop applications. This is loony tunes.
Rating:
Summary: A good, philosophical read on operating-system controversies
Review: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BeOS- Neal Stephenson has used all of these operating systems, and in "In the Beginning... was the Command Line", he compiles his thoughts on each of them. The book is not a technical review or even a thorough comparison/contrast/evaluation, but more or less just tells the reader about Stephenson's experiences with each and his resulting opinion. A bit of background on the evolution of the divergent systems helps to flesh out the opinion with some insight into why each occupies the niche it does. This is not a book for people looking for a detailed examination of the long-running "Windows v. Mac" debate, but whether you've spent your computing life on one side of the fence or the other, or like Stephenson have jumped over it a few times, it's valuable because it's an honest, well-expressed statement of a point of view. Not inspired- certainly not the way Stephenson's fiction is- but a good, solid, short read.
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Summary: The most important non-technical computer book ever written
Review: The title of this review may seem the height of hyperbole, but I stand behind it for this reason: never before has anyone looked at the computer and its effects from the standpoint of users as consumers of metaphors. A search for computer books on Amazon will give interested readers hundreds of choices of books that teach every conceivable computer language and operating system. Others provide insight into the physical workings of chips, RAM and motherboards. Add to that a hundred more that explore computers and their influence on speeding and shrinking our world and you have a catalog of several thousand books dedicated to a tool that has only been around in a usable fashion for under 50 years. In all that space, nothing is ever mentioned about how the user, through the act of purchasing operating systems and software, is consciously choosing to view the world of the computer, and, therefore, the larger world, through several competing, and Stephenson would say flawed, sets of complex metaphors and symbols. This decision, based on a vast array of different impulses and needs, is a telling look at modern consumers. It is an interesting fact that the wealthiest man in the world made his money not from the hardware in a computer, but through encoded data to make the hardware perform in a usable manner for the consumer market. So why is this so important? Because the way we choose to use the computer may be less important than the way we allow the computer to use us, i.e the manner in which we allow it to change and manipulate the ways we interact with the world. As computers become more pervasive worldwide, and more user friendly and intuitive, the more important the interface and iconography will become. It will take on the job of defining concepts that cross language and national boundaries. That is an important task for something that is still a consumer product being manipulated by individuals with their own agendas and ideas to promote. What is truly amazing about this book is that Stephenson has written it using his characteristic wry sense of humor, making it highly readable and sometimes incredibly funny. It is understandable by both the programmer and the non-programmer alike. While some may take issue with the conclusions that Stephenson draws from his observations, few will deny that looking at the computer from this vantage is an extremely important exercise and is fundamental to our understanding of just how far the computer has changed our world.
Rating:
Summary: Some light philosophical musing...
Review: This is a nice break from Neal Stephenson's sci fi career. In this work, Mr. Stephenson takes time to muse about the most important development of his generation: the computer operating system. I agree with most of his points on the operating system. I still prefer the command line myself. The command line lets you concentrate on logic, not fluff. The question on your mind is whether or not you should buy the book. Hardcore computer buffs will be disappointed because the book is not hardcore enough. The book really does not impart any new wisdom on OS development. It is just a pile of random thoughts. Many readers in Neal's Sci Fi fan base will simply scratch their head wondering why their favorite author let off a brain fart about operating systems. I am happy that Mr. Stephenson took time to think about this issue, and voice his opinions. However, I wouldn't put it toward the top of a must read list. Yet, if you are in the mood to read opinions about computers and the effects they have on our society...you will find it a short, sweet read.
Rating: 
Summary: Short, and Sure to Please [some] Unix Lovers
Review: A short book, really an extended series of articles, portraying Stephenson's various experiences with operating systems -- DOS, Windows, Mac OS, and the various shades of Unix/Linux. It is not at all a necessary read for fans of Stephenson's fiction. Neither is it a necessary read for anyone well informed about OSes -- you'll have your own opinions and undoubtedly argue vociferously with Stephenson. Those interested in learning about how PC operating systems got this way could use this book as an overview, but it is incomplete, not attempting to present all sides or histories, but just anecdotes of what Stephenson has encountered, and his thoughts as to why it is that way. Perhaps the only readers of this book to be rewarded are those seeking a minor insight into Stephenson, himself, as his first-person approach is revelatory.
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Summary: Cadillacs and Tanks
Review: As a hardware/software engineer I have worked with MS-DOS, Windows, MacOS, and UNIX for many years. Reading this fairly short, critical, and sometimes hysterically funny essay was an enjoyable experience, albeit I had some major reservations about some of Neal's suppositions and conclusions. Stephenson presents, first of all, a rather simplified version of the history of PC computing world and the operating systems that have helped define and advance (or impede) the development of the PC from something that only a geek could love to a ubiquitous near-appliance. His definition of what an operating system is matches what most programmers, using common sense, would call an operating system: a suite of low level tools that perform the mundane tasks of interpreting what an application wants to do to the physical realm of reading/writing memory, disk files, displaying graphics, etc. This is not a trivial point, as the current insistence by Microsoft that its operating system is inclusive of web browsers, audio/video players, and other application-level programs is a key item in its anti-trust defense. However, Stephenson bypasses the relevance of this in favor of defining the differences between the MacOS, Windows, UNIX, and BeOS. For this purpose he uses a highly useful (and sometimes funny) metaphor defining each OS as a car dealership, each of whom sells their type of product to a different type of customer. One of his major points is the idea that an OS is a saleable product, even though in essence it is nothing but a long string of 1's and 0's, information only, and not a physical item, represents a paradigm shift, on the order of trying to sell a car's driving interface (steering wheel, brakes, etc) as a product separate from, and having intrinsic value in its own right, the car itself. Given the obvious nonsense of this separation in the case of the car, he makes the case that operating systems should all eventually be given away free, ala Linux, and that businesses that depend on OS income are treading a very dangerous path. He shows a definite preference for those OSs that allow the user to 'get under the hood' and tweak its operating parameters, such as Linux, and includes a long discourse on the whole concept of simplified, pre-packaged interfaces as culturally defining/defined, including some good analogies with what Disney does to make complex, detailed subjects immediately comprehensible to Joe Six-Pack. All of this makes for easy, enjoyable reading, whether you are a power user or just someone who wants to send e-mails. But his conclusions about which OS is best and the future direction of OS evolution is definitely skewed towards the power user, someone who is comfortable in dealing with all the inner complexities of computers and software. As such, he sometimes forgets that computers are a tool (even though he devotes a section to different levels of tools in terms of quality , power and user skill levels), of no use to the user except insofar as they provide something that user wants and needs, and it is that end result the user wants, at the absolute minimum of fuss on his part. A thought provoking essay, whether you agree with him or not.
Rating: 
Summary: A Worthwhile read
Review: In the Beginning details the development of the major OS systems of our day and age. Mac OS, Windows, Linux, and BeOS are each studied and scrutnized. Their advantages and disadvantages are clearly stated. The writer compares the development of the four OS's to many real world examples, including Disney World and a car dealership. For anyone who is interested in OS history or just curious as to why Windows keeps adding applications to their system, this is an excellent. Be warned, if you are a diehard supporter of a particular OS, you may not appreciate some of the skerwing each OS takes from the author. Still, it was an excellent read and I recommend it.
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