Cages

To prevent any further proliferations of redundant code, the abbot of the Elephant's Footprint Clan decreed that his monks were only to produce code which was application-specific. Anything of a more general nature had to be proposed to a Software Reuse Subcommittee, which researched open source solutions, weighed the merits of the proposal against the needs of the various applications, amended the design as its members saw fit, and (if all signs were favorable) put the project on the implementation schedule. The whole process, from inception to execution, took many weeks.

When news of this policy reached him, the Java master sent for the abbot’s two prized songbirds. His letter promised that the birds would be returned the following week. And so they were, in two separate bamboo cages of the Java master’s devising.

The bars of the first cage were a handspan apart; the bird had easily escaped during the journey.

The bars of the second cage were so close that neither light nor air could pass through. The bird inside was dead upon arrival.

Tied to each cage was a poem in the master’s hand:

Along the road
from air to coffin
lie the many houses of cage.

The house of the thrush
is not shared
by the worm and the bull.