Do you know what a Hole Hawg is? Neither did I but Neal Stephenson does and he explains it in graphic and amusing detail. Stephenson, of course, is a Science Fiction author responsible for, among other things, the geek paean Snow Crash and, among crypto nerds, Cryptonomicon. He’s also the author of the longish essay In the Beginning was the Command Line, which, among other things, praises Emacs and says that Emacs “outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars.”
His much shorter essay, Unix – The Hole Hawg, is, similarly, an ode to Unix. Like the Hole Hawg—spoiler: the 800 pound gorilla of electric drills—Unix, he says, is a tool of such power and flexibility that everything else pales beside it. As with the Hole Hawg, it’s easy to hurt yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing or are careless but in capable hands it’s a tool that outshines all others. As Stephenson says of Unix masters, “They might use Apple/Microsoft OSes to write letters, play video games, or balance their checkbooks, but they cannot really bring themselves to take these operating systems seriously.”
Aside from his point about Unix, the essay is an interesting exploration of the Hole Hawg and well worth taking a couple of minutes to read. If you’re a Unix/Emacs user, it will resonate.