ESR koans, more like. Has the man ever written anything which lacked barely veiled subtext of "Look how smart I am!" IMHO The Art of Unix Programming has as little of that as anything of his that I've read, but only when he's relating facts; in any place where there's scope for opinion, his high opinion of himself shines forth.
I had read all these, before I got to know about ESR.
I was like, Wow!!, and it never ever came to my mind who wrote this or why. It was just some cool stuff and as a linux newbie I really liked these micro-stories or unix zen fables.
It happens with me as well that when I read something by an author for whom I hold some kind of prejudice, my reading is maligned a bit and I wish I could see what the author had to share from a completely neutral point of view, because then in that case, what I take away from my reading would be closer to what it had meant to be for me.
I think it's kind of strange that we've appropriated eastern philosophy to teach programming. Having read the Tao Te Ching and The Analects (two very conflicting works, philosophically), books like the Tao of Programming and The Codeless Code just seem to mask random programming knowledge in a foreign writing style to make it more entertaining.
Not saying that what's taught in those books is incorrect or not valuable, but it can sometimes be uncomfortable for people that respect the philosophy.
After Zen master Yuanwu's Blue Cliff Records - collection of 100 classical koans with his commentary verses - started to spread around, his successor Dahui noticed how monks and laypeople treated the collection as intellectual and artistic work (Yuanwu Keqin wrote and spoke very beautifully, so they do have artistic value) and burned all copies he could find.
The original use of koan is to be meditation aid (huatou-method, koan practice) not subject of philosophical inquiry.
I still think of this one whenever some lab apparatus starts working after an expert walks in and fiddles with some wires or power-cycles it --
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on.
Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly -
"You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding
of what is going wrong."
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
seriously. appropriating buddhism / zen (or any culture) just to look cool and wise is so condemnable to me. i really dislike the fetishized, orientalist view of eastern religions i often see in the hacker community. ESR is full of himself to begin with, but for him to be writing koans is so arrogant. these have nothing to do with actual zen koans anyway, they're just programming lessons obfuscated by self-indulgent "i'm so wise" writing with a "and then the student was enlightened" at the end. bleh
What's so terrible about it? Why should buddhism or zen be exempt from the sort of emulation, attempts at understanding, fun-making, and mixes of all three that we apply to essentially everything else?
I mean, these particular writings are terrible, but that's because of how they're written, not what they're attempting to do.
>What's so terrible about it? Why should buddhism or zen be exempt from the sort of emulation, attempts at understanding, fun-making, and mixes of all three that we apply to essentially everything
Because those belong to a culture (with the sociological sense), whereas the second kind of use you describe is what's called syncretism, and is a quite vulgar disregard for subtetly, context, fitness and it's subject matter in general.
Unless "belong to a culture" is supposed to be the answer, this appears to just say "it is because it should be" and not really an answer to my question at all.
There are no answers to questions outside of a framework like a culture (that is, outside of desired goals and accepted means to get to them).
Historically, most civilizations, including western thought, have found that syncretism is bad. It results in a shallow understanding of what it is dealing with and a hodgepodge of incompatible ideas.
Budhism (and lots of other things) was evolved and developed to be seen as a whole and in a few specific contexts. Not for mixing and matching random parts. You might get something out of it, but it won't be budhism anymore -- and, judged by budhist standards, it would be BS.
I guess it would be the equivalent of copy/pasting code, instead of properly thinking about your program's architecture.
> Budhism (and lots of other things) was evolved and developed to be seen as a whole and in a few specific contexts.
Wha? Buddhism has a long history of evolving and mixing with local cultures, just like any religion. The zen stuff that these "koans" are either imitating or satirizing (depending on your view) comes from mixing Buddhism and Confucianism and Taoism and who knows what else.
i don't think it should be exempt from those things. on the contrary i thought he was missing the "attempts at understanding". koans aren't riddles or parables, they're not to be figured out - i dont think you can draw a meaningful parallel with them and computer programming problems, which require critical thinking and problem solving. (sidenote: i think making fun of cultures that aren't your own is always disrespectful...)
I don't really have a problem with the idea of making a code monastery; it's intended to be entertaining, and I find it humorous to imagine a rustic monastery that is focused on modern technology. The weird part, to me, is the use of the word "koan." Maybe it's just that it sounds exotic, is associated with a "wise" religion, and is just close enough to make it sound okay to someone who doesn't know what a koan is supposed to be. Its offense isn't irreverence; it's that it's wrong.
They should be called "parables," but I guess that reminds people too much of Christianity or something.
I don't know about those books, but in the case of these koans, it's intended to be entertaining. It's a joke. I think it's also intended to be irreverent.
Well, anything bringing the Tao (which is about societal norms shaping) into a western lifestyle (which is all about individualism) is already conflicting in itself.
Add computer scientists who half-understand it in the first place wanting to make a totally unrelated point regarding Unix or whatever, and the congitive dissonace can blow a Marshall stack.
You may find it strange, but Dr. Ting does not[0]. eForth and Zen is written by a native Chinese speaker who is able to read the source texts in the original Ancient Chinese.
With a graphical browser, the images-of-text are ideograms I (ignorant westerner) do not understand, so the experience is the same. That's probably intended as humor.
Q: Do you have a source for the change in viewpoint?
Comment: Just because an author changes his views, doesn't mean that other people don't still agree with what was written. Authors don't get to tell people how to interpret and understand their writings.
Actually, scratch that last bit - As the author of this comment, what it really means is that you love it and should send me lots of dollars in gratitude.
What Stephenson changed his view on primarily was his choice of OS, mostly because OS X offered most of the power of UNIX while also presenting a user-friendly GUI. I believe he's had a few things to say on this since (principally that he's increasingly less happy with OS X) though I don't have any specific links at the moment.
I've been using the CLI more lately, but I do something new only after having looked it up with my GUI web browser first... (yes, I know, RTFM and all that)
