macbook# which vim
/opt/local/bin/vim
macbook# which vi
/opt/local/bin/vi
macbook# which nvi
/opt/local/bin/nvi

macbook# cd/
cd/: Command not found.
Exit 1
macbook# cd /
macbook# pwd
/
macbook#

macbook#
macbook# cd /tmp
macbook# mkdir stuff
macbook# rm stuff
rm: stuff: is a directory
Exit 1
macbook# rmdir stuff
macbook#

The Hole Hawg is a drill made by the Milwaukee Tool Company. If you
look in a typical hardware store you may find smaller Milwaukee
drills but not the Hole Hawg, which is too powerful and too expensive
for homeowners. The Hole Hawg does not have the pistol-like design
of a cheap homeowner's drill. It is a cube of solid metal with a
handle sticking out of one face and a chuck mounted in another. The
cube contains a disconcertingly potent electric motor. You can hold
the handle and operate the trigger with your index finger, but

During the Eighties I did some construction work. One day, another
worker leaned a ladder against the outside of the building that we
were putting up, climbed up to the second-story level, and used the
Hole Hawg to drill a hole through the exterior wall. At some point,
the drill bit caught in the wall. The Hole Hawg, following its one
and only imperative, kept going. It spun the worker's body around
like a rag doll, causing him to knock his own ladder down. Fortunately
he kept his grip on the Hole Hawg, which remained lodged in the

I myself used a Hole Hawg to drill many holes through studs, which
it did as a blender chops cabbage. I also used it to cut a few
six-inch-diameter holes through an old lath-and-plaster ceiling. I
chucked in a new hole saw, went up to the second story, reached
down between the newly installed floor joists, and began to cut
through the first-floor ceiling below. Where my homeowner's drill
had labored and whined to spin the huge bit around, and had stalled
at the slightest obstruction, the Hole Hawg rotated with the stupid

But I never blamed the Hole Hawg; I blamed myself. The Hole Hawg
is dangerous because it does exactly what you tell it to. It is not
bound by the physical limitations that are inherent in a cheap
drill, and neither is it limited by safety interlocks that might
be built into a homeowner's product by a liability-conscious
manufacturer. The danger lies not in the machine itself but in the
user's failure to envision the full consequences of the instructions
he gives to it.

A smaller tool is dangerous too, but for a completely different
reason: it tries to do what you tell it to, and fails in some way
that is unpredictable and almost always undesirable. But the Hole
Hawg is like the genie of the ancient fairy tales, who carries out
his master's instructions literally and precisely and with unlimited
power, often with disastrous, unforeseen consequences.

Unix is the Hole Hawg of operating systems, and Unix hackers, like
Doug Barnes and the guy in the Dilbert cartoon and many of the other
people who populate Silicon Valley, are like contractor's sons who
grew up using only Hole Hawgs. 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.