Hacker Koan
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
When Matsumoto first came to these shores, he met a precocious young hacker who was strong in the way of Perl, which had many practitioners then.
“Matsumoto,” the young man said, “why should I learn your foreign Ruby? I am strong in the way of Perl, and I have yet to find a problem it is not flexible enough to solve.”
Matsumoto smiled his kind smile and said, “One does not learn Ruby for oneself. One learns Ruby for others.”
“Ha,” the young man said, “then your way is not for me. I am not the cooperating type. I work on my own projects and my projects alone. No one but me reads my code.”
Matsumoto bowed his head and said, “All hackers cooperate, even you.”
“You are a fool, Matsumoto! Did I not just say I work alone?”
To this Matsumoto said, “Even those who work alone, cooperate with all the people they once were and all those they will become.”
Upon hearing this, the young man was enlightened.
Some problems with my router call for a simple power cycle; others call for a power cycle with ~30 seconds unplugged from power. Someone without much knowledge of the router might do the same thing as me (power cycle), and it might even occasionally work (if s/he unplugs it, goes to make lunch, and comes back), but my domain knowledge enables me to solve the problem more consistently (seemingly magically).