21–30 of 43 posts
The images-of-text make the website partially unreadable when using a non-graphical browser. I suppose I should take that to mean something deep.
Some people seem to forget why we still use cli, from discourses on the graphical user interface, they think that it's not 'modern'...
In the beginning was the command line: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
Of course the points made are still valid but they are by no means absolute truth and never were.
I think it's kind of strange that we've appropriated eastern philosophy to teach programming. Having read the Tao Te Ching and The Analects (two very conflicting works, philosophically), books like the Tao of Programming and The Codeless Code just seem to mask random programming knowledge in a foreign writing style to make it more entertaining. Not saying that what's taught in those books is incorrect or not valuable…
"Misuse" of koans has long history. After Zen master Yuanwu's Blue Cliff Records - collection of 100 classical koans with his commentary verses - started to spread around, his successor Dahui noticed how monks and laypeople treated the collection as intellectual and artistic work (Yuanwu Keqin wrote and spoke very beautifully, so they do have artistic value) and burned all copies he could find. The original use of ko…
I think it's kind of strange that we've appropriated eastern philosophy to teach programming. Having read the Tao Te Ching and The Analects (two very conflicting works, philosophically), books like the Tao of Programming and The Codeless Code just seem to mask random programming knowledge in a foreign writing style to make it more entertaining. Not saying that what's taught in those books is incorrect or not valuable…
seriously. appropriating buddhism / zen (or any culture) just to look cool and wise is so condemnable to me. i really dislike the fetishized, orientalist view of eastern religions i often see in the hacker community. ESR is full of himself to begin with, but for him to be writing koans is so arrogant. these have nothing to do with actual zen koans anyway, they're just programming lessons obfuscated by self-indulgent…
I mean, these particular writings are terrible, but that's because of how they're written, not what they're attempting to do.
ESR koans, more like. Has the man ever written anything which lacked barely veiled subtext of "Look how smart I am!" IMHO The Art of Unix Programming has as little of that as anything of his that I've read, but only when he's relating facts; in any place where there's scope for opinion, his high opinion of himself shines forth.
I don't know much about ESR but I am pretty sure those koans are meant to be humorous.
I think it's kind of strange that we've appropriated eastern philosophy to teach programming. Having read the Tao Te Ching and The Analects (two very conflicting works, philosophically), books like the Tao of Programming and The Codeless Code just seem to mask random programming knowledge in a foreign writing style to make it more entertaining. Not saying that what's taught in those books is incorrect or not valuable…
seriously. appropriating buddhism / zen (or any culture) just to look cool and wise is so condemnable to me. i really dislike the fetishized, orientalist view of eastern religions i often see in the hacker community. ESR is full of himself to begin with, but for him to be writing koans is so arrogant. these have nothing to do with actual zen koans anyway, they're just programming lessons obfuscated by self-indulgent…
They should be called "parables," but I guess that reminds people too much of Christianity or something.
I think it's kind of strange that we've appropriated eastern philosophy to teach programming. Having read the Tao Te Ching and The Analects (two very conflicting works, philosophically), books like the Tao of Programming and The Codeless Code just seem to mask random programming knowledge in a foreign writing style to make it more entertaining. Not saying that what's taught in those books is incorrect or not valuable…
I think you're looking at the finger instead of the moon.
This is one of those things where I read it and was just like, "What the hell does that mean?"
I think it's kind of strange that we've appropriated eastern philosophy to teach programming. Having read the Tao Te Ching and The Analects (two very conflicting works, philosophically), books like the Tao of Programming and The Codeless Code just seem to mask random programming knowledge in a foreign writing style to make it more entertaining. Not saying that what's taught in those books is incorrect or not valuable…
Add computer scientists who half-understand it in the first place wanting to make a totally unrelated point regarding Unix or whatever, and the congitive dissonace can blow a Marshall stack.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
seriously. appropriating buddhism / zen (or any culture) just to look cool and wise is so condemnable to me. i really dislike the fetishized, orientalist view of eastern religions i often see in the hacker community. ESR is full of himself to begin with, but for him to be writing koans is so arrogant. these have nothing to do with actual zen koans anyway, they're just programming lessons obfuscated by self-indulgent…
What's so terrible about it? Why should buddhism or zen be exempt from the sort of emulation, attempts at understanding, fun-making, and mixes of all three that we apply to essentially everything else? I mean, these particular writings are terrible, but that's because of how they're written, not what they're attempting to do.
Because those belong to a culture (with the sociological sense), whereas the second kind of use you describe is what's called syncretism, and is a quite vulgar disregard for subtetly, context, fitness and it's subject matter in general.