Unix koans

http://www.catb.org/~esr//writings/unix-koans/

by bratfarrar • 12 years ago

125 39 12 years ago

jumpwah• 12 years ago

Some people seem to forget why we still use cli, from discourses on the graphical user interface, they think that it's not 'modern'...

patrickmay• 12 years ago

In the beginning was the command line: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

pmr_3• 12 years ago

I'm curious why people still throw around this essay even though Stephenson said he changed his view on the topic.

Of course the points made are still valid but they are by no means absolute truth and never were.

Dewie• 12 years ago

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)

vdm• 12 years ago

Touché: discoverability.

jdkaplan• 12 years ago

Reminds me of The Codeless Code

http://thecodelesscode.com/contents

jrockway• 12 years ago

The images-of-text make the website partially unreadable when using a non-graphical browser. I suppose I should take that to mean something deep.

thyrsus• 12 years ago

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.

aaronem• 12 years ago

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.

fromdoon• 12 years ago

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.

anaphor• 12 years ago

You might find Alan Perlis' epigrams interesting http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html

olalonde• 12 years ago

I don't know much about ESR but I am pretty sure those koans are meant to be humorous.

tankenmate• 12 years ago

Many a truth is said in jest.

WizzleKake• 12 years ago

If you like this, you might like the Tao of Programming: http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

These are really clunky and artless, it's like one of those webcomics that's really just poser models.

austinl• 12 years ago

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.

chris_mahan• 12 years ago

I think you're looking at the finger instead of the moon.

jaiball2• 12 years ago

and you are mistaking the finger for the moon

amagumori2• 12 years ago

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

mikeash3• 12 years ago

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.

omegaham• 12 years ago

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.

arbsn• 12 years ago

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.

nabla9• 12 years ago

"Misuse" of koans has long history.

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.

ps. The original MIT AI lab koans are more clever than these ESR ones. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/dae/notes/ai-koans

pmr_3• 12 years ago

Funnily, esr also maintains/mirrors those koans as part of the Jargon Files. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html

mturmon• 12 years ago

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.

coldtea4• 12 years ago

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.

samatman• 12 years ago

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.

http://www.ultratechnology.com/efzen.htm

canadev• 12 years ago

This is one of those things where I read it and was just like, "What the hell does that mean?"

jaiball2• 12 years ago

Good! just like a koan should

Unix koans

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