I’m not much of a fanboy. But when you find there’s someone out there who has never failed in his or her professional capacity, to not just produce value, but to make you a bit giddy in the process, it’s time to pass along to others how great you’ve found the experience.
Neal Stephenson has written a metric buttload of awesomeness for the geek-minded novel devourer. And he has probably never written a sentence as bad as the preceding one. Over the years, his novels have become thicker, richer, and more… well, just more.
Note: Amazon has pulled the plug on Amazon Affiliates in retaliation for having to collect sales tax, so I’m not referring clients to Amazon, anymore. I’m also no longer buying from Amazon. #AmazonBoycott.
In the Beginning…was the Command Line is a thin, non-fiction, humorous manifesto describing the drift from the clean, simple OS to the bloated, overly controlling, icon flaunting, UI driven OS. It was written and published online in 1999, when the Mac OS was at it’s worst and Windows was just achieving true digital blasphemy with its revolting browsers, monopolistic practices and bombastic bloatware. For windows users it was still pretty true until Windows 7 came out last year. Shortly after the online rant came the book. But the online version is still available here.
Stephenson has since recanted a bit, admitting it was overstated. But, hey, that’s what rants are for. And, of course, technology rolls on. Imagine reading “In the Beginning…” on the iPad.