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This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
catb is full of great info, including the answer to the question.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html
Edit: replaced with the succinct version.
Ooohhh, I’ve been reading bits of catb.org since I was like 13!
Using one specific source for the definition of the Unix Philosophy is against the Unix Philosophy. /s