Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
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Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
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Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#2I feel every chapter from this book can be pulled out and can be converted into a blogpost in its own right.
This blogpost touches only on a chapter of the book.
Nevertheless, nice, short read.
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#3I feel every chapter from this book can be pulled out and can be converted into a blogpost in its own right. This blogpost touches only on a chapter of the book. Nevertheless, nice, short read.
I'll add to this that I recommend just reading the book as well instead of waiting for blog posts! :D
It's a good book - well worth your time, in my opinion.
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#4I feel every chapter from this book can be pulled out and can be converted into a blogpost in its own right. This blogpost touches only on a chapter of the book. Nevertheless, nice, short read.
It's my favourite part of the book and really resonated with me at the time.
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#5I feel every chapter from this book can be pulled out and can be converted into a blogpost in its own right. This blogpost touches only on a chapter of the book. Nevertheless, nice, short read.
Are you talking about “zen and the art...”, or are you talking about a book by the author of the blog post?
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#6In Pirsig's second book, Lila, he returns to examine what the romantic-classical synthesis looks like from another perspective: the moral perspective. He imagines the moral qualities of the world. What are the moral qualities of a motorcycle? How ought a motorcycle to behave?
Pirsig proposes a thought experiement, the "chemistry teacher" experiment, where a chemistry teacher is left on a beach to rot. Through this experiment, he concludes that the morality of chemical objects, of atoms and molecules, is precisely the rules of chemistry. Indeed, Pirsig supposes that most of the natural world is like this, where things do as they ought already.
(I would close the door by suggesting that, in the Discordian tradition, the morality of people, and indeed any sapient creature, is to do as we like. This not only neatly lines up with Pirsig's philosophy, but also gives that the Free Will Theorem still holds and is useful!)
So, what is the morality of software and computers? The morality of physical computers is quantum electronics, and the morality of software is information theory and mathematics itself. I'm humbled.
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#7In Pirsig's second book, Lila, he returns to examine what the romantic-classical synthesis looks like from another perspective: the moral perspective. He imagines the moral qualities of the world. What are the moral qualities of a motorcycle? How ought a motorcycle to behave? Pirsig proposes a thought experiement, the "chemistry teacher" experiment, where a chemistry teacher is left on a beach to rot. Through this ex…
Metaphysics considers the possibility of a universes with properties different than ours.
If such things exist, then things in our universe behave as they are more than any ought.
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#8After I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I went and bought myself a ‘71 Honda CB350, almost the exact bike Pirsig rode in his book. I found that fixing this motorcycle, taking it apart, fixing internal component, figuring out how everything ties together, and upgrading worn out or otherwise non-functional components, and putting it all back together, felt extraordinarily similar to my day job as a software engineer. There’s even the same “loop”: fix one thing, turn it on to test, then turn it off again and fix the next thing. The turnaround time is waaaaayy slower, and there’s a lot more opportunity to hurt yourself, but the skills as a programmer translate very well to motorcycle maintenance. Interesting to see that I’m not the only one who sees these similarities.
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#9After I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I went and bought myself a ‘71 Honda CB350, almost the exact bike Pirsig rode in his book. I found that fixing this motorcycle, taking it apart, fixing internal component, figuring out how everything ties together, and upgrading worn out or otherwise non-functional components, and putting it all back together, felt extraordinarily similar to my day job as a soft…
I've seen "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" recommended on book threads on HN multiple times, by multiple people, so I would agree that yes, a lot of other engineers see the similarities!
The way the author explains how to go about to find the issue, fix it, etc. has made me much calmer about finding my own bugs and fixing them indeed.
Re: Zen and the Art of Software Maintenance
#10Everyone in our circle of nerds recommends this book and all three times I tried to read it I found it absolutely unbearable. It collects dust in a donation box that I haven’t mustered the strength to carry down to goodwill.
Does anyone else share this sentiment? Did you ever crack the reason why so many love it? Obviously taste is subjective and we are not all supposed to like everything but I’ve always felt like the odd man out with this specific text.