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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 havi

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 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/ 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

xwdv 4y ago
I did a stint at an old monastery in Estonia that was converted into a sort of hostel for international programmers. I was assigned a dorm where I spent much of my time wearing simple muted clothes, quietly writing code on an old computer with an IBM mechanical keyboard, just like all the other programmers. When we were not writing code, we did chores around the monastery, usually I was sweeping the cobblestones or fetching supplies from the small town near by. Some took to more technical chores such as managing the local area network of the monastery; there was no internet access but computers at the monastery could still communicate with each other locally. Most days we would start off by listening to sermons from wise old programmers in the grand hall. The past Christian iconography had been taken down. The simple stone architecture that remained with its thick pillars holding up soaring ceilings far above our heads encouraged pure creative thought. We did not sully our thoughts with pointless conversations, a brief nod while passing another programmer in the halls was enough social interaction for the day. Anything else could be taken online to the monastery’s IRC channels. The best part was the libraries. Books upon books about programming that you’ve never heard of or even seen, that were never sold commercially. Binders filled with notes from ancient programmers printed on pages now yellowing with the passage of time. All manners of topics and languages were available here. Floppy disks with ancient programs, old punch cards, vintage machines and peripherals. Secrets that you could not learn anywhere else. Maybe some day I’ll return and spend my days pontificating over a new generation.
- raphlinus 4y ago
  Very nice story. Something like this would appeal to me, actually. It reminds me of Nesin Mathematics Village in Turkey. There are also some similarities to Recurse Center, where I did do a 3-month batch in 2017. It also has a library with some rare items, and a good collection of retrocomputing artifacts.

xwdv 4y ago

I did a stint at an old monastery in Estonia that was converted into a sort of hostel for international programmers. I was assigned a dorm where I spent much of my time wearing simple muted clothes, quietly writing code on an old computer with an IBM mechanical keyboard, just like all the other programmers. When we were not writing code, we did chores around the monastery, usually I was sweeping the cobblestones or fetching supplies from the small town near by. Some took to more technical chores such as managing the local area network of the monastery; there was no internet access but computers at the monastery could still communicate with each other locally. Most days we would start off by listening to sermons from wise old programmers in the grand hall. The past Christian iconography had been taken down. The simple stone architecture that remained with its thick pillars holding up soaring ceilings far above our heads encouraged pure creative thought. We did not sully our thoughts with pointless conversations, a brief nod while passing another programmer in the halls was enough social interaction for the day. Anything else could be taken online to the monastery’s IRC channels. The best part was the libraries. Books upon books about programming that you’ve never heard of or even seen, that were never sold commercially. Binders filled with notes from ancient programmers printed on pages now yellowing with the passage of time. All manners of topics and languages were available here. Floppy disks with ancient programs, old punch cards, vintage machines and peripherals. Secrets that you could not learn anywhere else. Maybe some day I’ll return and spend my days pontificating over a new generation.

raphlinus 4y ago
Very nice story. Something like this would appeal to me, actually. It reminds me of Nesin Mathematics Village in Turkey. There are also some similarities to Recurse Center, where I did do a 3-month batch in 2017. It also has a library with some rare items, and a good collection of retrocomputing artifacts.