Ken Thompson once said he wished he spelled the 'creat' system call with another 'e'. Seriously, see these slides by Rob Pike from his talk in 2001: "The good,

Ken Thompson once said he wished he spelled the 'creat' system call with another 'e'. Seriously, see these slides by Rob Pike from his talk in 2001: "The good, the bad and the ugly: the Unix legacy": http://herpolhode.com/rob/ugly.pdf http://herpolhode.com/rob/ugly.pdf Pike writes: "What makes the system good at what it’s good at is also what makes it bad at what it’s bad at. Its strengths are also its weaknesses. A simple example: flat text files. Amazing expressive power, huge convenience, but serious problems in pushing past a prototype level of performance or packaging." And so on, with several other examples.