Pipes are very cool and useful, but it's hard for me to understand this common worship of something like that. Yes, it's useful and elegant, but is it really the best thing since Jesus Christ?
I have honestly been questioning my own understanding of pipe, since I've failed to see the significance before; first I thought it was just `a | b` as in "first do a, then b". So then it just seemed like a notational way of composing programs. Then I thought, uh, ok say what? Composing things is the oldest trick in the conceptual book. But then I read more about it and saw that it had this underlying wiring of standard input and output and forking processes that made me realize that I had underestimated it. So, given that, I was wondering if there is even more that I've been missing.
I have for that matter read about named pipes before and tried it out a bit. It's definitely a cool concept.
If you had said what you just said in your follow up, I think you'd actually have gotten some up votes.