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The Codeless Code
An illustrated collection of (sometimes violent) fables concerning the Art and Philosophy of software development, written in the spirit of Zen kōans.
Complete collection at http://thecodelesscode.com/contents.
Complete collection at http://thecodelesscode.com/contents.
- GenresProgrammingPhilosophy
230 pages, ebook
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 17, 2018
Violent twee parables about software development. Generally overwrought, and you can get them in a minute or two each time, unlike the bizarre original koans, which demand convoluted confabulation.
But 'Codeless Code' is an instance of an important genre: the romanticisation of the highly abstract and novel. We need such things; otherwise those of us without internal wellsprings of meaning will find it boring, and will thus never excel; otherwise a culture will never grow, and nothing human lasts without growing a culture. There is enough art, except regarding new matters, new concepts, new possibilities, where there is nowhere near enough.
"Ah!", you say, "But Yudkowsky did just this, and got roundly mocked and called a cult leader and divers other bad things." Yes: that is the main tax we pay to be on the internet. I think of Yudkowsky as George Eliot thinks of Carlyle (though she hated him btw):
(Who didn't start the fire...)
[Free here]
[Thinking #3, Theory #2]
But 'Codeless Code' is an instance of an important genre: the romanticisation of the highly abstract and novel. We need such things; otherwise those of us without internal wellsprings of meaning will find it boring, and will thus never excel; otherwise a culture will never grow, and nothing human lasts without growing a culture. There is enough art, except regarding new matters, new concepts, new possibilities, where there is nowhere near enough.
"Ah!", you say, "But Yudkowsky did just this, and got roundly mocked and called a cult leader and divers other bad things." Yes: that is the main tax we pay to be on the internet. I think of Yudkowsky as George Eliot thinks of Carlyle (though she hated him btw):
...the highest aim in education is analogous to the highest aim in mathematics, namely, to obtain not results but powers, not particular solutions, but the means by which endless solutions may be wrought. He is the most effective educator who aims less at perfecting specific acquirements than at producing that mental condition which renders acquirements easy, and leads to their useful application...
On the same ground it may be said that the most effective writer is... he who rouses in others the activities that must issue in discovery, who awakes men from their indifference to the right and the wrong, who nerves their energies to seek for the truth and live up to it at whatever cost... he clears away the film from your eyes that you may search for data to some purpose. He does not, perhaps, convince you, but he strikes you, undeceives you, animates you. You are not directly fed by his books, but you are braced as by a walk up to an alpine summit, and yet subdued to calm and reverence as by the sublime things to be seen from that summit. Such a writer is Thomas Carlyle.
It is an idle question to ask whether his books will be read a century hence: if they were all burnt as the grandest of Suttees on his funeral pile, it would be only like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest. For there is hardly a superior or active mind of this generation that has not been modified by Carlyle’s writings; there has hardly been an English book written for the last ten or twelve years that would not have been different if Carlyle had not lived... The extent of his influence may be best seen in the fact that ideas which were startling novelties when he first wrote them are now become common-places. And we think few men will be found to say that this influence on the whole has not been for good...
(Who didn't start the fire...)
[Free here]
[Thinking #3, Theory #2]
August 20, 2017
A most entertaining and insightful collection of tech fables. Must-read for anyone interested in design and architecture of computer systems and software.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews