[HN Gopher] The Tao of Programming (1987)
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The Tao of Programming (1987)
Author : pyinstallwoes
Score : 114 points
Date : 2023-09-27 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mit.edu)
| diogenes4 wrote:
| I don't get the connection to daoism. This just seems like a set
| of super context-sensitive worldviews set in a certain style.
| bowsamic wrote:
| There was a period in hacker history when hackers thought they
| were reviving some kind of ancient zen and dao traditions, but
| in a very light and not really very appreciative way
| jmfldn wrote:
| It's written in a set of Tao Te Ching-style aphorisms for
| humorous effect. That's the connection I guess!
| diogenes4 wrote:
| It would come off as a lot more meaningful if it didn't try
| to pass itself off as a religious text the author clearly
| didn't value.
| kinghajj wrote:
| This is passing itself off as a religious text as much as
| The Book of Eli passes itself off as a gospel. That is, not
| at all.
| revskill wrote:
| What's the difference between multiplication and addiction
| conceptually ? It's one of my mystery in programming. The Tao has
| no answer for it.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| > What's the difference between multiplication and addiction
| conceptually?
|
| Addiction is multiplication by infinity.
| liquidise wrote:
| Possibly the most thoughtful and profound reply to a typo
| i've seen.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Since it is from the 80's, maybe the Motorola 68000 can answer
| your question.
|
| Looks like... more than 60 clock cycles. Yikes!
|
| https://oldwww.nvg.ntnu.no/amiga/MC680x0_Sections/timstandar...
| gilcot wrote:
| foo times boo ...means you are adding foo, boo times...
| see[1]@[2] so it's a kinda shortcut.
|
| [1]
| https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/e12e...
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication
|
| Similar relation between exponentiation (power) and
| multiplication... see[3]@[4]
|
| [3]
| https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/dcb8...
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponentiation
| KMag wrote:
| In any field, there's always an additive inverse, not so for
| multiplication.
| dhosek wrote:
| Exactly. In fact, there will always be some element _a_ in a
| field1 for which there is no multiplicative inverse. This is
| why with boolean algebra, both [?] and [?] are multiplication
| operators (for [?], T has no inverse; for [?], F has no
| inverse).
|
| [?]
|
| 1. To be clear for readers, when KMag and I say, "field,"
| we're referring to a specific mathematical construct in which
| there are + and x operators and symbols 0 and 1, the former
| being the additive identity and the latter the multiplicative
| identity.
| [deleted]
| hcks wrote:
| this is the book that made me realise programmers are losers
| tiznow wrote:
| and not your lived experiences?
| orbit7 wrote:
| The title reminds me to give The Tao of Physics another read.
| _kst_ wrote:
| I'm reasonably sure this book is still under copyright.
|
| It seems that a lot of people don't care about that for certain
| books.
| euiq wrote:
| Intellectual property rights should be abolished.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the arc of 1000 unlicensed copies begins with your first curl
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Tao of Programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33210739 - Oct 2022 (3
| comments)
|
| _The Tao of Programming (1987)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031486 - Nov 2020 (63
| comments)
|
| _The Tao of Programming (1987)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19023159 - Jan 2019 (57
| comments)
|
| _The Tao of Programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8035332 - July 2014 (43
| comments)
|
| _The Tao of programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1180356 - March 2010 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Tao of Programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=963860 - Nov 2009 (21
| comments)
|
| _The Tao Of Programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595501 - May 2009 (11
| comments)
|
| _The Tao of Programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541426 - April 2009 (2
| comments)
|
| _The Tao of Programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185506 - May 2008 (1
| comment)
|
| _The Tao of Programming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907 - June 2007 (1
| comment)
| Angostura wrote:
| Read the headline and was immediately taxed back to CIX when the
| Taos guys were teasing their operating system in a conference of
| the she name.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| After the Epilogue, there will be a Fork.
|
| "Your Pride is your greatest fault," said the Master Programmer
| to a novice.
|
| "You will stand helpless before an ocean of spaghetti, mocked by
| great clouds."
|
| "All your full-stack enterprise-grade orchestrated containers
| will exist only to pretty-print JSON."
| lpapez wrote:
| I laughed out loud at that last one, hits close to home.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "You will stand helpless before an ocean of spaghetti, mocked
| by great clouds."
|
| Wow. Was this a prophecy?
| 22289d wrote:
| > But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.
|
| lol
|
| I don't know anything about COBOL but I can feel all of the
| people that must have triggered. Which is surely why the author
| included it. Probably like if today that said PHP or Lisp.
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| And those who wrote in Assembly would dunk on those C
| programmers. And those who wrote in binary would dunk on the
| Assembly devs. And those that only had 0's would dunk on those
| binary devs.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not Lisp, no. COBOL was like picking your nose with boxing
| gloves on (h/t Michael Pavlinch). It was _appallingly_ clumsy
| to use. Lisp was like programming directly in the compiler 's
| abstract syntax tree, with both the plusses and the minuses of
| that. It was almost the opposite extreme from COBOL.
|
| Or to put it a different way: I don't program in Lisp because
| that language isn't a good fit for how my brain works and the
| kind of problems I work on. I don't program in COBOL because I
| don't like reading things that take that long to come to the
| point.
| sosuke wrote:
| Page with all the formatting this page removed:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010208180818/http://misspiggy....
| onesphere wrote:
| class=""
| worik wrote:
| Surrender! to compile
|
| Weather the ferocious storm
|
| You will find true bliss
| encomiast wrote:
| I was thinking of sharing this with some younger colleagues on
| slack and paused. Is this a little culturally insensitive by
| today's standards? I work with someone from China and have no
| idea what their thoughts on using the Tao like this would be. On
| the other hand, maybe I'm being overly sensitive.
| HerculePoirot wrote:
| [dead]
| 0xf00ff00f wrote:
| It's fine. Can't find it right now but there used to be a
| Japanese translation somewhere on the web. Pretty sure I've
| seen a Chinese translation as well.
| highwind wrote:
| I'm Korean and if I were to write an article titled "Program
| like the cowboys of old west" (I've no clue what that article
| will be about but), would Americans be offended?
|
| Within Korean culture, Doh (do) is a same concept as Tao but
| I'm not offended.
|
| I think you are being overly sensitive.
| dhosek wrote:
| The big difference is that Tao has religious overtones to it,
| while cowboys of the Old West, doesn't. I think OP was more
| concerned about the fact that this is grabbing something out
| of another culture and potentially misusing it or using it in
| a way that others might not approve. A perhaps more apropos
| analogy might be The Ten Commandments of Programming, which
| would be OK with most people, although the Torah of
| Programming, which employed Jewish stereotypes in its telling
| would be more problematic. And having typed that, this is
| where the potential issue with the article could lie: less in
| the title and more in the body and whether it employs
| stereotypes or culturally insensitive appropriations.
| foobarian wrote:
| Throw in some references to the Islamic prophet and you'd
| be way in inappropriate territory then.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Ten Akhams of Programming maybe?
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >Program like the cowboys of old west
|
| That's a very cool title for an article.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| "Real gunslingers chase down rouge threads and kill them
| with their bare hands while the operating system and all
| its logs crumble around them."
| rvbissell wrote:
| > rouge threads
|
| "The red threads are not the issue here, dude! ...Also,
| dude, that's not the preferred nomenclature. 'Native
| threads', please."
| HerculePoirot wrote:
| "Cracking Code on the Frontier: Lessons from the Cowboys of
| the Old West"
|
| https://pastebin.com/DhdHsR3i
| cglong wrote:
| > if I were to write an article titled "Program like the
| cowboys of old west" (I've no clue what that article will be
| about but)
|
| It'd be about this! :D
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_coding
|
| And as an American, I would not be offended. Cowboy coders
| might be if the article is approaching it from the derogatory
| perspective.
| morelisp wrote:
| Not knowing enough about the thing to know if it's culturally-
| insensitive is largely what makes it culturally insensitive.
| You could fix that, but it's easier to stoke random coals on
| message boards.
| encomiast wrote:
| This is not a fair take. To know enough about something like
| a different religion is not something you just go fix. It's
| not like reading the Wikipedia page on Taoism will give me
| the cultural context to evaluate how a joke about Taoism will
| make people feel. Give how often otherwise smart people make
| insensitive remarks about classes of people they should be
| familiar with (at least in the US, like women, native
| Americans, Mexicans, etc) I suspect "fixing it" is harder
| that you realize and an easier way is to simply ask (which I
| did).
| burnished wrote:
| Making people feel bad is what makes something culturally
| insensitive. Gaining the perspective necessary to tell when
| that might be the case isn't so simple that you should sum it
| up as 'you could fix that'. As you well know it can be
| nuanced.
|
| Worse, it just occurred to me that you're chastising some one
| for asking questions in order to 'fix that'. This isn't a
| 'just asking questions' guy topic so there is really no
| reason to doubt motives.
| raincole wrote:
| You're overthinking it by a lot. Tao is not an inherently
| religous concept, at least for most people. Actually the use of
| "The Tao of..." (...Zhi Dao ) is somewhat common in modern
| writing.
|
| Source: as a native speaker.
|
| _Edit_ : that being said you might not want to share this book
| with junior programmers. Not because it's offensive, but that
| they might think you're a snob.
| aseo wrote:
| Eh, I probably wouldn't bat an eye, unless if you had a
| reputation of being culturally insensitive. If you wanna play
| it safe, you can postmark "... and yes, I agree, it is a bit
| gimmicky."
| jfk13 wrote:
| I guess it's no more insensitive than writing a book titled
| "The ___ Bible" (for your choice of language or topic... there
| are plenty of examples).
| ru3ty wrote:
| Tao
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (1987)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Bunch of discussion from 3 years ago on it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25031486
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| I wonder what would replace COBOL in 1.2 if it was written today.
| smokel wrote:
| Java, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, PHP, Go, Rust, C, C++
| come to mind.
|
| The Tao (sometimes) opposes rituals and tradition, and that is
| exactly what these languages excel in. It is probably wiser to
| continue unfolding the landscape of programming languages.
| worik wrote:
| > Java, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, PHP, Go, Rust, C,
| C++ come to mind.
|
| Yes.
|
| Unfortunately
| vlowther wrote:
| Nothing. You have to get into INTERCAL territory to find
| something more tedious to work with than COBOL.
| poutinepapi wrote:
| HA! I remember when my "Programacion 1" teacher sent us this as
| part of our curriculum circa 18 years ago or so. Good to know
| it's still going around.
| thyrsus wrote:
| "Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have
| to be maintained."
|
| I am instantly reminded of /bin/true which originally was a 0
| byte length file with the execute bits set. Then the edict came
| down that all programs were to bear an AT&T copyright...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's always nice to run "/bin/true --version".
|
| On my machine it's on version 8.32. But it's a program that run
| many more commands than just true. It's a good reminder that
| things are always more complicated than they seem.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Adding on to the complexity of things: I have a /bin/true
| but, as noted by /bin/true --help, my shell has its own true
| as well!
| martincmartin wrote:
| true.
| takinola wrote:
| The sections on attaining enlightenment could have been written
| by Calvin's dad.
| twh270 wrote:
| Related-ish, http://www.thecodelesscode.com/contents, "An
| illustrated collection of (sometimes violent) fables concerning
| the Art and Philosophy of software development, written in the
| spirit of Zen koans.
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