Order and Chaos

A certain monk, known for the elegance of his code, had a habit of refactoring the code of his fellows to match. “For inconsistency multiplied becomes chaos,” he would explain, “and chaos breeds complexity, and complexity brings confusion, and confusion is the mother of ten thousand defects.”

Master Suku—who above all prized the cleanliness of code—heard of this. She approached the monk, saying, “I require your assistance in correcting a problem.”

Suku revealed to the monk a great repository, home to the source code for the Temple’s most ancient application. Over the course of decades an uncounted procession of monks and nuns had passed through its hallowed directories: adding, removing, refactoring, refining, trying a new framework here, a new approach there. Several times the entire code base had been migrated from one language to another, scarring the deeper layers with unfathomably bizarre design patterns. Within one utility class the naming conventions were so wildly inconsistent that the monk grew dizzy and had to lie down on the floor.

“Bring order to chaos,” said Suku, and went out.

The monk proceeded in earnest to rewrite the application in the style he had perfected over so many years. He chose a glittering new framework to replace the many rusty ones, then picked one dusty corner of the repository and worked slowly outwards: adding, removing, refactoring, refining.

The monk had converted the merest fraction of the files when there came a pounding on his door.

“Emergency!” said the breathless abbot outside, grabbing the monk by his robe and pulling him out the door. “Disaster! Disorder! Deadline! Doom! Not enough people and not enough time; you’re needed at once, come on, come on!”

The monk protested, calling for someone to fetch master Suku that she might intervene, but the abbot merely flipped the monk onto his backside and dragged him down the hallway like a noisy sack of rice.

That evening Suku found the monk, tied to his new workstation by many coils of strong rope.

“I have seen your commits in the great repository,” said the master, drawing a long knife which she placed at his throat. “Where once there had been a hundred styles, there now are a hundred and one.”

She made a quick motion. The monk cringed, expecting to feel his life blood spilling inside his robe. Instead the knife only severed one strand of his hempen bonds.

“Not perfect, but better,” said Suku, and went out.

She did likewise for one hundred evenings until the monk was freed.

Afterwards the monk meddled less with the code of his fellows, and instead began to pride himself on his ability to mimic the design patterns of others when modifying their applications.

“It is still a truth of refactoring,” he now said, “that sometimes one must introduce chaos to bring order, just as the road to the sea must sometimes scale a mountain before it turns downward again. Yet order is not a destination: merely a direction from complex to simple, from more to less. The master asked for less but I thought only of one, and chose a path worthy of a hailstone when simple subtraction would have sufficed.”