Path: vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.cais.com!cais3.cais.com!jdfalk From: "J.D. Falk" Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery Subject: Culture Time: Excerpts from the Tao of Programming Followup-To: poster Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 13:55:56 -0400 Organization: Schroedinger's Cats Lines: 55 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: cais3.cais.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To: Culture Time! mailing list X-Home-URL: http://www.cais.com/jdfalk/culture-time.html X-Unexpected-Header: The Spanish Inquisition Answer: 42 X-Comment: EMail to be added to the Culture Time mailing list. __ ____ __ __ ____ ____ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ __ __ __ ___ ___ / / / / / / / /_/ /_ / / /|/| /_ /_ /_/ /_ / /_/ / \ /_ / __/_ / | /_ ~From: Michael Faurot ~Subject: The Tao of Programming from "The Tao of Programming" ----------------------------- 4.3 === A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software - regardless of how insignificant," said the master. "Is the Tao in a hand held calculator?" asked the novice. "It is," came the reply. "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.. "It is even in a video game," said the master. "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?" The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson is over for today," he said. 8.2 === A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noticed the novice's preoccupation with a hand held computer game. "Excuse me," he said, "may I examine it?" The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. "I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard," said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human nor to be conquered by the human." "Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this mysterious setting?" The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it underfoot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened. _ ____ __ __ __ __ __ _ / | / / / _ / \_/ / / / / / / / ___ ___ __ __ __ _ _ _ _ __/ |/|/__/_ __/_ __/ /_/ / / __/_ / / / __/