The Tao of Programming

http://www.textfiles.com/100/taoprogram.pro

by edw519 • 17 years ago

122 21 17 years ago

textfiles.com

revorad2• 17 years ago

What a classic!

Edit: It is a bit weird that this is the top story right now. Must be a slow day.

tamas• 17 years ago

I saw it earlier on reddit, and when I noticed it on hn, I was about to flag it for being yet another trash story copied from reddit, but then I saw that it already got 15 votes. I must be too young for this, but I did't find it funny, insightful or engaging, thus I did't feel any inclination to read more than a couple pages.

sganesh• 17 years ago

It's on the lines of Tao Te Ching, a great book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching

richardw• 17 years ago

Try read it again. It really is a classic - tells of an age before everybody and their dog became programmers. It's a bit more subtle than the current fare and mixes humour and wisdom well.

revorad2• 17 years ago

I usually wouldn't care too much about karma for individual comments or posts but seeing the above comment being downvoted simply for not liking a book, I must say the voting patterns on HN are getting quite weird.

Unless a comment is offensive or distracting the conversation, take it easy with the downvotes people.

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rbanffy3• 17 years ago

"I did't find it funny, insightful or engaging"

The wise programmer is told about Tao and follows it. The average programmer is told about Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer is told about Tao and laughs at it.

Confusion2• 17 years ago

Being older doesn't miraculously make it more fun, insightful or engaging. It may just not be your cup of tea.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

An oldie but a goodie

Slashed• 17 years ago

The first time I read it was a few years ago, and it was in Russian. Brings back some memories, like when I was so crazy about programming that I learned basics of assembler using only the debug utility on windows without any books. Those were great days!

rbanffy3• 17 years ago

You missed the best part. Get yourself an Apple II, a C64 or an 8-bit Atari.

But get the real thing. Getting an emulator is not nearly as fun.

viulian• 17 years ago

I like this text a lot. There is this serene peace you get when you know your code works no matter what.

The first thing that came to mind after reading the text was Joel's article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...

quote: "Today, to work on CityDesk, I need to know Visual Basic, COM, ATL, C++, InnoSetup, Internet Explorer internals, regular expressions, DOM, HTML, CSS, and XML. All high level tools compared to the old K&R stuff, but I still have to know the K&R stuff or I'm toast."

rjurney• 17 years ago

I bought this at Book Buyers in Mountain View a few weeks ago. Its entertaining. They had a few copies, if anyone wants one.

hbeaver• 17 years ago

I found this book in bargain bin years ago. I guess it must merit reading.

aufreak3• 17 years ago

In many places, it beautifully treads the thin line between humour and wisdom -

  Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. 
  When he awoke, he exclaimed:

      "I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine,
       or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!."

:D :D :D

antirez• 17 years ago

The TL;DR; of programming.

The Tao of Programming

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