Douglas McIlroy Professions : Mathematician Born : 1932 Browse All Authors Top 5 quotes by Douglas McIlroy This is the Unix philosophy. Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a universal interface. Douglas McIlroy working-together writing philosophy The real hero of programming is the one who writes negative code. Douglas McIlroy real hero writing As a programmer, it is your job to put yourself out of business. What you do today can be automated tomorrow. Douglas McIlroy tomorrow today jobs Keep it simple, make it general, and make it intelligible. Douglas McIlroy keep-it-simple simple Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface. Douglas McIlroy program streams writing Similar Authors Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch mathematician Brahmagupta mathematician Augustus De Morgan mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy mathematician Atle Selberg mathematician Arthur Cayley mathematician All Authors