
The Tao of Programming - edw519
http://www.textfiles.com/100/taoprogram.pro
======
revorad
What a classic!

Edit: It is a bit weird that this is the top story right now. Must be a slow
day.

~~~
tamas
I saw it earlier on reddit, and when I noticed it on hn, I was about to flag
it for being yet another trash story copied from reddit, but then I saw that
it already got 15 votes. I must be too young for this, but I did't find it
funny, insightful or engaging, thus I did't feel any inclination to read more
than a couple pages.

~~~
rbanffy
"I did't find it funny, insightful or engaging"

The wise programmer is told about Tao and follows it. The average programmer
is told about Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer is told about
Tao and laughs at it.

~~~
Confusion
Which makes you sound like the average pseudo-science practitioner. They also
keep telling others they "just don't get it", but perhaps someday, they will,
of only the would 'embrace the teaching'. We scoff at that, but when someone
uses the same approach with programming, while adding some Eastern sugar, we
suddenly think it should be clear it's enlightening? Bollocks.

~~~
gloob
If you think the purpose of this is to be "enlightening", I suspect you may
have missed the point. It's funny, in much the same way as the Principia
Discordia is funny, and that's about it. It does rather a good job at it, too,
imho.

~~~
rbanffy
I think your message enlightened this apprentice.

------
aufreak3
In many places, it beautifully treads the thin line between humour and wisdom
-

    
    
      Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. 
      When he awoke, he exclaimed:
    
          "I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine,
           or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!."
    

:D :D :D

------
viulian
I like this text a lot. There is this serene peace you get when you know your
code works no matter what.

The first thing that came to mind after reading the text was Joel's article:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html)

quote: "Today, to work on CityDesk, I need to know Visual Basic, COM, ATL,
C++, InnoSetup, Internet Explorer internals, regular expressions, DOM, HTML,
CSS, and XML. All high level tools compared to the old K&R stuff, but I still
have to know the K&R stuff or I'm toast."

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Slashed
The first time I read it was a few years ago, and it was in Russian. Brings
back some memories, like when I was so crazy about programming that I learned
basics of assembler using only the debug utility on windows without any books.
Those were great days!

~~~
rbanffy
You missed the best part. Get yourself an Apple II, a C64 or an 8-bit Atari.

But get the real thing. Getting an emulator is not nearly as fun.

------
DanielBMarkham
An oldie but a goodie

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rjurney
I bought this at Book Buyers in Mountain View a few weeks ago. Its
entertaining. They had a few copies, if anyone wants one.

------
hbeaver
I found this book in bargain bin years ago. I guess it must merit reading.

------
antirez
The TL;DR; of programming.

