Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

deusinmachina.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 122 posts

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#41

Post by LAC-Tech »

raphlinus wrote: post #33

A lot of the cultural phenomena around Rust can best be explained in religious terms. It's no accident that we are sometimes referred to as the "Rust Evangelism Strike Force," and the word "zealot" is frequently used, of course largely by critics. There's a deeper level as well. The concept of "memory safety" which is a core principle of Rust has, I believe, a lot in common with religious concepts of purity and clean…

I'm not sure if this was meant in seriousness or in jest, but regardless I really enjoyed it.

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#42

Post by 082349872349872 »

raphlinus wrote: post #33

A lot of the cultural phenomena around Rust can best be explained in religious terms. It's no accident that we are sometimes referred to as the "Rust Evangelism Strike Force," and the word "zealot" is frequently used, of course largely by critics. There's a deeper level as well. The concept of "memory safety" which is a core principle of Rust has, I believe, a lot in common with religious concepts of purity and clean…

That'd explain some of the pushback around https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34557840 ; the people who think we all ought to be using the same languages and tools are akin to believers in proselytizing religions?

(don't mind me; you might find me upon occasion with the animists, worshipping at the altar of '*' and '&')

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#43

Post by jiggawatts »

dale_glass wrote: post #8

One weird thing I noticed over time is the enshrinement of old and crappy technologies, in the face of all reason. Some examples: Some people for some reason I can't understand have warm and fuzzy feelings about FTP, despite it being a horrible protocol in multiple ways. Yet, for a long time it was often thought of being the "proper" way to download stuff, even though even HTTP is technically better in many respects.…

The name is the reason.

You see, it is the File Transfer Protocol.

Do you need to transfer a file? Use the protocol designed to transfer files! Why would you use something silly like a Hypertext protocol for binary!?

I see similar conflation of the name-vs-reality all the time. My favourite is the “secure” network that is differentiated not by firewall access policy, but by name only. Literally just a label.

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#44

Post by kyleyeats »

the_af wrote: post #10

I hate to be a kill joy, but none of these are true examples of religion or mysticism. They are at best playful examples of hacker culture, and at worst examples of arguments with opinions "strongly held"; i.e. flamewars. "Religious wars" in tech is not to be taken literally, nobody thinks these are spiritual in nature; it's an analogy to the fury of real world religious wars. The Tao of Programming takes the trappin…

Your argument is that, what, religions aren't real? Then you're saying that this stuff doesn't count because it's... also not real?

What's the difference between a person being religious and a person acting religious? To a non-believer I mean.

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#45

Post by devwastaken »

raphlinus wrote: post #33

A lot of the cultural phenomena around Rust can best be explained in religious terms. It's no accident that we are sometimes referred to as the "Rust Evangelism Strike Force," and the word "zealot" is frequently used, of course largely by critics. There's a deeper level as well. The concept of "memory safety" which is a core principle of Rust has, I believe, a lot in common with religious concepts of purity and clean…

Eating pork won't cause memory corruption.

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#46

Post by eternalban »

devwastaken wrote: post #45
raphlinus wrote: post #33

A lot of the cultural phenomena around Rust can best be explained in religious terms. It's no accident that we are sometimes referred to as the "Rust Evangelism Strike Force," and the word "zealot" is frequently used, of course largely by critics. There's a deeper level as well. The concept of "memory safety" which is a core principle of Rust has, I believe, a lot in common with religious concepts of purity and clean…

Eating pork won't cause memory corruption.

A dirty read, actually.

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#47

Post by the_af »

kyleyeats wrote: post #44
the_af wrote: post #10

I hate to be a kill joy, but none of these are true examples of religion or mysticism. They are at best playful examples of hacker culture, and at worst examples of arguments with opinions "strongly held"; i.e. flamewars. "Religious wars" in tech is not to be taken literally, nobody thinks these are spiritual in nature; it's an analogy to the fury of real world religious wars. The Tao of Programming takes the trappin…

Your argument is that, what, religions aren't real? Then you're saying that this stuff doesn't count because it's... also not real? What's the difference between a person being religious and a person acting religious? To a non-believer I mean.

No, my argument is that none of the examples given by the author are of people acting religious.

The most obvious one is the photo of Stallman that opens the article, posing as "Saint Ignucious": that's a joke, and Stallman is a self-declared atheist. Likewise, "Folklore.org" is a website about the early history of Apple; anecdotes told by the people who were there; there's nothing spiritual or mystic about it. I also explained many of the rest of TFA's examples.

The only exception is TempleOS, but that was the work of a schizophrenic and maybe not the best example of the hacker community at large. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that particular example.

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#48

Post by labrador »

Terry Davis and Temple OS. God communicated to him through the random number generator.

This article is meant to be humorous, but I think it unintentionally hit on some important truths.

Terry Davis Was Right

Religion Is Computing, Computing Is Religion

Terry’s big idea was that it is not possible to separate religion from computing.

Since the beginning, every complex society has been based on a shared socio-cognitive operating system, a religion. Your religion says you must live a certain way. It tells you what is valuable and what is disgusting. It gives you your fundamental paradigm and ontology of belief through which you interpret the world. It tells you to read certain texts, listen to certain traditions of wise men, and meet with like-minded others at certain places and times. It tells you to avoid certain influences, and seek out others. It gives you techniques for structuring thought and mind and memory. When you have doubts, it gives you procedures to ask for and receive insight. It tells you who you are, and what your life is for.

https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/04/01/palladium-is-now-tem...

I'm researching these ideas more since ChatGPT has shown me how to make certain religious and spiritual ideas more accessible.

Levandowski shut down his AI church after he got in trouble with the law for something unrelated. He was too soon, so it's only a matter of time one starts up again.

https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-i...

Bonus link: Terrance McKenna. Culture is your operating system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c8an2XZ3MU

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#49

Post by aebtebeten »

What sort of religious/spiritual folklore could we come up with?

Turing meeting his end with the apple is an obvious one, but I'd rather imagine that, for having brought computing to the mortals, he's chained to a rock in perpetuity, when he attempts to port DOOM to the ACE, only to be foiled each evening when the moths show up and immolate themselves, destroying various valves, requiring him to start afresh each morning...

Shannon came down from the mountain and gave us sequences* of symbols; various later prophets (McCarthy, Crockford, etc.) have added new structures on top but it's difficult to go very wrong if one hews to the mitzvot of the old ways: after all, string homomorphisms stream.

(Rabin & Scott introduced monotapism in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34561797 ; polytapists suffer [both in this world and any possible successor] by losing the grace of Boolean closure, for ever and ever. Amen)

Very near the Western Wall is a mosque whose wall contains the parallel port where Englebart (peace be upon him) plugged in the divine Mouse.

Every generation rediscovers Confucian Rectification of Names for themselves; that's why we have so many names for the same things in Informatics. (cue https://xkcd.com/927/ )

When Siddhārtha Gautama left the palace for the first time in his life, he encountered legacy code, bit rot, abandonware, and an Agda programmer. Shocked at the rampant suffering in software, he started his noble quest to free software...

* Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk. — LK

Re: Religious and spiritual folklore surrounding programming

#50

Post by makeitdouble »

devwastaken wrote: post #45
raphlinus wrote: post #33

A lot of the cultural phenomena around Rust can best be explained in religious terms. It's no accident that we are sometimes referred to as the "Rust Evangelism Strike Force," and the word "zealot" is frequently used, of course largely by critics. There's a deeper level as well. The concept of "memory safety" which is a core principle of Rust has, I believe, a lot in common with religious concepts of purity and clean…

Eating pork won't cause memory corruption.

It probably did a lot at some point. Pork requires more preparation/cooking discipline than beef for instance.
Post reply on HN