The Elements of Networking Style: And Other Essays & Animadversions on the Art of Intercomputer Networking

by M.A. Padlipsky

The World's Only Known Constructively Snotty Computer Science historically, its polemics for TCP/IP and against the international standardsmongers' "OSI" helped the Internet happen; currently, its principles of technoaesthetic criticism are still eminently applicable to the States of most (probably all) technical Arts—all this and Cover Cartoons, too . . . but it's not for those who can't deal with real sentences . . . If, as we should, we let 1,000 flowers bloom,
We let 10,000 weeds bloom as well;
It must be our great task, then,
To distinguish the weeds from the flowers

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Ronald Pottol · Rating 5 out of 5]

From today, an interesting and funny look at the early days of the internet and ip networking. Did you know that OSI was a real (if fatally flawed, yeah, rough consensus and running code beats endless committee meetings for getting things working) networking protocol family? It's a collection of papers and essays from the late 1970s and very early 1980s. One example: "x.25, a low standard", he means it both ways, it's low level, and he didn't like it much.

[David Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Priceless. Wish I had read it in the 1980's. 'Though I probably wouldn't have understood it then.