The Codeless Code - Tales to make wiser programmers. | Hacker News Reader

The Codeless Code - Tales to make wiser programmers.

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202 pointsrajatkhanduja31 comments

Many thanks to those who emailed me directly as a result of this posting. I very much agree that these do not approach the subtlety (and worth) of genuine koans: they are just stories I was possessed to write, expressing various thoughts I have had during my years as a software engineer. I am glad to know that some have found them enjoyable; that was always the point.

Regards to all here,

Qi.

thanks for sharing these. i enjoyed reading some of them this morning, hope to read the rest soon :)

These lack the subtlety of the koans they are attempting to emulate. It's more like Aesop's Code than Codeless Code.

Agreed. What they inherit from koans appears to be merely the violence that the koans take for granted. My favorite example of this is the story of Gutei's Finger:

    It is said that Master Gutei would always raise a finger wisely when
    teaching about Zen. Now in his monastery there were young boys studying
    to be Zen masters themselves, and one boy, when he was asked questions
    by his teachers, began also to raise his finger when answering Zen
    questions. The teachers told Gutei about this and Gutei summoned him to
    a rare audience with the master! Gutei asked him a simple question which
    the boy could answer confidently, and the boy raised his finger as he
    responded.

    Gutei immediately grabbed the finger and in one motion cut it off with a
    concealed knife. The boy screamed and ran to the far side of the room.
    Gutei called him to stop and return, and the boy recovered his composure
    and plodded back in front of the master. Gutei raised his own finger
    before the boy, and in that moment the boy was enlightened.

    Indeed, on his deathbed Gutei's last words were: "My teacher Tenryu
    taught me the Zen in my finger, and though I used it my whole life, I
    couldn't use it up."

I think the first thing anybody notices about this story is just the violence. When I told it to my brother he asked, "the lesson is, do not f--k with the Master?" But there is a deep set of Zen ideas -- lifting fingers which you do not have, and not getting attached to idiosyncrasy. Perhaps the boy even thought, "I should cut off the Master's finger," as he attained enlightenment.

I think, like almost everything, the Koans are a reflection on the society and the way of thinking at the time of writing. In what is now peacefuller times people would be aghast that someone would do that. I dug around through a few, and a lot of them feel a bit too meta for me, though I did find the Hello World Koan to be an interesting discussion on our flippancy with code: http://thecodelesscode.com/case/14

Violent koans aren't particularly common, they just stand out. However, they do reflect a fundamentally destructive aspect of spiritual practice, namely, that it undermines the conditioning behind cherished identities. The point of the story is that the boy was chasing after validation as a Zen master and had adopted the finger-raising ritual as a part of his identity as a competent Zen practitioner. When Gutei cut it off, he was removing a support for a cherished identity, and this was the basis for the boy's identity at that moment.

s/basis for the boy's identity/led to the boy's enlightenment/. True as written, just a bit redundant, and not what I meant. :)

A young monk gazed over the walls of the temple at the town in the valley below. Upon seeing the townspeople toiling at meaningless tasks, he asked the master, "Why do they not seek enlightenment?"

The master replied, "They are unaware of the darkness."

The monk resolved to help the townspeople, and began every day to lecture about the importance of enlightenment in the temple square. Every day, his fellow monks cheered and applauded his speech, and reassured him that he spoke the truth.

After a week, the master approached the monk and asked whether he was making progress with the townspeople.

The monk replied, "I keep exhorting them to seek enlightenment, but not a single townsperson has stepped foot inside the temple."

The master shook his head sadly and went on. After another week of preaching in the temple square, the monk still had no success. In frustration he sought out the master, asking "Why do the townspeople remain unenlightened?"

After a moment of silence, the master replied, "The fool searches in the light for that which is found in darkness."

As someone who used to read a lot of books on Zen, I've been enjoying these. The one on triggers made me laugh -- at work we have a running joke about triggers. I've expressed so much dislike for them that when discussing a problem people will say "we could use triggers to do that!" just to get a rise out of me.

People likewise goad me at work by suggesting extensive use of design patterns (particularly in absurd combinations like AbstractFlyweightFactory).

At my shop we use extensive use of point-less ahem point-free code. Of course, you can also always use more category theory. And, the best remedy against the type system giving you headaches, is: more types!

(If you haven't guessed, yet, we use Haskell.)

These can take the form of the joke "if your solution to a problem is [x] then you now have two problems." Possible substitutions for x:

Regular Expressions, DB Triggers, xml, Java/VB/PHP/Other language, NoSQL... the list can go on and on here.

No need to be so negative. I actually think the S&M character of these stories goes well with their content (Java development and best practices).

I quite like these. Regarding the negative comments, these stories were not intended to conform strictly to the traditional kōan form, and are clearly not expected be taken entirely seriously (the About page makes this clear!)

As a personal bonus for me, the author makes reference to the book "Gödel, Escher, Bach", of which I was somehow not previously aware. It sounds like it's right up my street.

I cannot recommend this book enough. I know it's not for everyone, but if you're one of those do like it you'll probably never forget it. I'm not sure I agree with everything in it, but damn that book made me think ;)

I'm not sure GEB is intended to be agreed or disagreed with.

This reminds me of the book called "The Tao of Programming", from 1987. If you like these you might consider checking the book out as well.

"The Tao of Programming" was much, much better. Great book as an introduction to OOP.

Haters gonna hate.

Not everyone can be incredibly incredible.

There's no hate in that post. (Unless it's been edited)?

Can anyone explain the one on cups? http://thecodelesscode.com/case/30

overflow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two%27s_complement

Ah. I was confused because of this: "the index — a one-byte integer — could never exceed 255 by definition." If it can hold the value 255, it couldn't be a signed integer, so there would be no room for negative numbers. Though I suppose this must have been their mistake.

Is the Elephant’s Footprint Clan hiring?

"Satisfactory."

Some stories reminded me of "Kung Fu Panda" !!!.

Haha, I actually thought the same thing.

Good to know that I am not the only one.

God help us from those kind "enlightenments".

This is extremely lame. Cool graphic on the side though.

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