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Unix koans
- jumpwah 13y agoSome people seem to forget why we still use cli, from discourses on the graphical user interface, they think that it's not 'modern'...
- patrickmay 13y agoIn the beginning was the command line: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
- pmr_ 13y agoI'm curious why people still throw around this essay even though Stephenson said he changed his view on the topic. Of course the points made are still valid but they are by no means absolute truth and never were.
- sophacles 13y agoA question and a comment. Q: Do you have a source for the change in viewpoint? Comment: Just because an author changes his views, doesn't mean that other people don't still agree with what was written. Authors don't get to tell people how to interpret and understand their writings. Actually, scratch that last bit - As the author of this comment, what it really means is that you love it and should send me lots of dollars in gratitude.
- pmr_ 13y agoSource: see question 8 here: http://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-responds-with-wit-and-humor http://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-r... Comment: I fully agree that a change of opinion does not invalidate the old argument. I thought I made that clear, but apparently I was wrong.
- dredmorbius 13y agoWhat Stephenson changed his view on primarily was his choice of OS, mostly because OS X offered most of the power of UNIX while also presenting a user-friendly GUI. I believe he's had a few things to say on this since (principally that he's increasingly less happy with OS X) though I don't have any specific links at the moment.
- Dewie 13y agoI've been using the CLI more lately, but I do something new only after having looked it up with my GUI web browser first... (yes, I know, RTFM and all that)
- vdm 13y agoTouché: discoverability.
- jdkaplan 13y agoReminds me of The Codeless Code http://thecodelesscode.com/contents http://thecodelesscode.com/contents
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jrockway 13y agoThe images-of-text make the website partially unreadable when using a non-graphical browser. I suppose I should take that to mean something deep.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- thyrsus 13y agoWith a graphical browser, the images-of-text are ideograms I (ignorant westerner) do not understand, so the experience is the same. That's probably intended as humor.
- aaronem 13y agoESR 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.
- fromdoon 13y agoI had read all these, before I got to know about ESR. I was like, Wow!!, and it never ever came to my mind who wrote this or why. It was just some cool stuff and as a linux newbie I really liked these micro-stories or unix zen fables. It happens with me as well that when I read something by an author for whom I hold some kind of prejudice, my reading is maligned a bit and I wish I could see what the author had to share from a completely neutral point of view, because then in that case, what I take away from my reading would be closer to what it had meant to be for me.
- anaphor 13y agoYou might find Alan Perlis' epigrams interesting http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html
- olalonde 13y agoI don't know much about ESR but I am pretty sure those koans are meant to be humorous.
- tankenmate 13y agoMany a truth is said in jest.
- WizzleKake 13y agoIf you like this, you might like the Tao of Programming: http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html
- GFK_of_xmaspast 13y agoThese are really clunky and artless, it's like one of those webcomics that's really just poser models.
- austinl 13y agoI 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, but it can sometimes be uncomfortable for people that respect the philosophy.
- coldtea 13y agoWell, anything bringing the Tao (which is about societal norms shaping) into a western lifestyle (which is all about individualism) is already conflicting in itself. 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.
- chris_mahan 13y agoI think you're looking at the finger instead of the moon.
- jaiball 13y agoand you are mistaking the finger for the moon
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- amagumori 13y agoseriously. 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'm so wise" writing with a "and then the student was enlightened" at the end. bleh
- canadev 13y agoThis is one of those things where I read it and was just like, "What the hell does that mean?"
- jaiball 13y agoGood! just like a koan should