
Linux Poetry Explains the Kernel, Line By Line - lclark
http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/777473-linux-poetry-explains-the-kernel-line-by-line
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leakybucket
My favorite tech poem is Radia Perlman's "Algorhyme". She's the inventor of
the spanning tree protocol.

    
    
    		Algorhyme
    
            I think that I shall never see
            a graph more lovely than a tree.
            A tree whose crucial property
            is loop-free connectivity.
            A tree that must be sure to span
            so packet can reach every LAN.
            First, the root must be selected.
            By ID, it is elected.
            Least-cost paths from root are traced.
            In the tree, these paths are placed.
            A mesh is made by folks like me,
            then bridges find a spanning tree.
    
                             Radia Perlman
    
    

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman)

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niels_olson
Love it. Here's the blog: [http://www.linux-poetry.com/](http://www.linux-
poetry.com/)

I'd actually say I found that knowing I could understand this in condensed
poetic form makes it a nice affirmation that I do actually understand some of
this stuff, but I also learned a lot.

I hope this continues!

~~~
mrrrgn
Thanks! No plans of stopping in sight. :)

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NAFV_P
> _“I have all this experience but I suffer from a thing that almost every
> person who doesn’t have an actual background in CS does: I have islands of
> knowledge with big gaps in between,” she said. “Every time I 'd come across
> some concept, some data structure in the kernel, I'd have to go educate
> myself on it.”_

I get the impression that Morgan Phillips avoids saying she has a background
in CS due to not holding a degree in it. I think she has every right to state
that she does have a background (being classified as a hacker goes without
saying).

Now, I am going to compile her poetry.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Ha! Wouldn't it be lovely if having a "background" in CS actually made you as
knowledgeable as Phillips thinks it does?

I've got a CS degree and 10 years of industry experience, and I'm still at
clueless as she is and probably more.

~~~
emmelaich
She was a physics major.

There seems to be a strong correlation between physicists and good computer
scientists:- Knuth, Dijkstra for example.

~~~
NAFV_P
IIRC RMS has a good background in physics.

Seymore Cray worked with radios during WWII and had a very strong background
in electrical engineering. He had to rely on Maxwell's equations to analyse
signal paths [0]. The bottom anecdote [1] I found highly amusing, very "egg
and chicken".

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Technical_approach...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Technical_approaches)

[1] [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/gbell/craytalk...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/gbell/craytalk/sld089.htm)

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lifeisstillgood
It's nice. I have more trouble groking the poem form so I would not use this,
but certainly I understand those areas of tech where I wrote and researched
say an article, far more than areas of flew over and just got working.

Each to their own learning I guess - but very nice

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bsaul
Reminds me of a discussion on HN a few years ago about painting some very
famous algorithms on a canvas and expose them in exhibitions. There's a
inherent form of beauty in some of them that may be visible even to the non-
initiated.

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sytelus
This could be a great evidence for code as expression and needing protection
by First Amendment argument.

------
NAFV_P
Phillips' on github:

[https://github.com/mrrrgn](https://github.com/mrrrgn)

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pervycreeper
>It's a “pedagogical hack”

Looking at a couple of them, I have no clue how it makes things any simpler.
Removing line breaks and re-forming the text into correct sentences would make
things easier to understand, imho.

~~~
tcheard
> I have no clue how it makes things any simpler

I'm sure it would make it simpler to her and probably keeps her motivated and
encourages her to get a better understanding. It seems more of a way for her
to personally understand the kernel, and she is just sharing the poems with
everyone else for whoever wants to read.

~~~
mrrrgn
Yes! That's definitely the way I think about it. These are just my way of
taking notes, and I thought they'd be fun to share. I do it this way because
writing a poem requires a bit of reflection, so, instead of just retaining
nodes of information here and there I'm also capturing connections and
concepts. The novelty of writing in prose also keeps things from seeming
tedious. :)

