Mon, 14 Apr 2014 00:56:20 -0400 Kōans for the Software Engineer -- An illustrated collection of (sometimes violent) fables, concerning the Art and Philosophy of software development. http://thecodelesscode.com Mon, 14 Apr 2014 00:56:20 -0400 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/140 Sun, 13 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/140 <img src="/pages/case-140/heartbleed.jpg" alt="" title="I have some sympathy for the developer: this bug is so epic they gave it a website and ITS OWN LOGO. Even &#39;goto-fail&#39; doesn&#39;t have a logo!" class="illus-right" /> <p>A novice asked of master Bawan: “Say something about the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed_bug">Heartbleed Bug</a>.”</p> <p>Said Bawan: “Chiuyin, the Governor’s treasurer, is blind as an earthworm. A thief may give him a coin of lead, claim that it is silver and receive change. When the treasury is empty, which man is the villain? Speak right and I will spare you all blows for one week. Speak wrong and my staff will fly!”</p> <p>The novice thought: <i>if I say the thief, Bawan will surely strike me, for it is the merchant who doles out the coins. But if I say the merchant he will also strike me, for it is the thief who takes advantage of the situation.</i></p> <p>When the pause grew too long, Bawan raised his staff high. Suddenly enlightened, the novice cried out: “The Governor! For who else made this blind man his treasurer?”</p> <p>Bawan lowered his staff. “And who is the Governor?”</p> <p>Said the novice: “All who might have cried out ‘this man is blind!’ but failed to notice, or even to examine him.”</p> <p>Bawan nodded. “This is the first lesson. Too easily we praise Open Source, saying smugly to each other, ‘under ten thousand eyeballs, every bug is laid bare’. Yet when the ten thousand avert their gaze, they are no more useful than the blind man. And now that I have spared you all blows for one week, stand at ease and tell me: what is the second lesson?”</p> <p>Said the novice: “Surely, I have no idea.”</p> <p>Bawan promptly struck the novice’s skull with his staff. The boy fell to the floor, unconscious.</p> <p>As he stepped over the prone body, Bawan remarked: “Code as if everyone is the thief.” </p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/139 Sat, 05 Apr 2014 00:00:00 -0400 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/139 <img src="/pages/case-139/Lecture2.jpg" alt="" title="In their defense, they were able to buy three new servers last year with all the money they saved on shampoo." class="illus-right"/> <p>It had been many weeks since master Suku and her three novices set out from the Temple of the Morning Brass Gong across the great mountains to the west. The first warm winds of spring greeted the party as they arrived at the Temple of the Thrown Coin, whose monks built social-media-enabled websites for the wealthy merchants of their province. Here, Suku would teach her art of creating maintainable code, while in return the Thrown Coin would share the secret riches of their technology stack.</p> <p>One of the two novice monks in Suku’s charge observed that the monks of the Thrown Coin attended closely to his words, treating him with the regard one might bestow upon a visiting dignitary. But when the same words were spoken by Suku, the monks of the Thrown Coin either raised their eyebrows skeptically or lowered their gaze to fiddle with cellphones and tablets. They did likewise when the novice nun spoke.</p> <p>It was then that the novice monk noticed the almost complete absence of women from the Temple of the Thrown Coin. Only a few nuns could he spy as he cast his eyes around the lecture-hall. All appeared to be of low rank, and they asked no questions.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>At breakfast next morning the novice monk sat next to one of the senior abbots.</p> <p>“Why are there so few women in this temple?” asked the novice monk.</p> <p>“Because very few girls apply for admittance anymore,” replied the abbot.</p> <p>“Why is that?” asked the novice monk.</p> <p>“Because it is widely known that most girls do not meet our rigorous standards,” replied the abbot.</p> <p>“Why is that?” asked the novice monk.</p> <p>“Because productivity requires harmony, and many female applicants are a poor fit for our culture,” replied the abbot. “Indeed, most have wasted the time we invested in them by leaving soon after arriving.”</p> <p>“Why is that?” asked the novice monk.</p> <p>“Because they were unhappy here, and did not work well with the monks,” replied the abbot.</p> <p>“Why is that?” asked the novice monk.</p> <p>“Because like so many great temples, the culture of this temple is a boy’s culture: rough and rude, cruel and crude, in work and in play,” replied the abbot.</p> <p>“Why is that?” asked the novice monk.</p> <p>“Because there are so few women in this temple,” replied the abbot. </p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/138 Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0400 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/138 <p>Djishin said to master Banzen: most works of mankind do not fail before their time. A saddle will outlive the mare and her foal; a horse-bridge will serve a hundred years unless an elephant treads upon it. Even the stones of our humblest abbey were laid before the venerable Abbess was born. Why then does software fail so often?</p> <p>Banzen said: to know the answer, you must first find your way to the Complex Plain. This is a tricky task, for most of that grassy expanse is imaginary to some degree; but since your origin point is not only real but guaranteed to be at the plain’s exact center, you need only start looking for it and you’ll find yourself already there. Then head due north-east until you come to a rumbling land known as the Province of Eternal Crisis. There the ground belches fire and buckles and twists, like a serpent; mountains change places with valleys; rivers run backwards at midnight and sideways under the new moon. Nothing endures in that place. The sturdiest house must be rebuilt every spring, so men have quit all use of stone and erect only simple huts of saplings and straw. As for horses or bridges you will find neither, for saddles crumble in the arid winds, and the many chasms must be spanned anew by rope each week as their edges dance up and down. No sane man would live in that land if it did not hold the possibility of great wealth. Yet every shovel is blunted by the rocky soil, every ax dulls, every ox dies.</p> <p>Djishin said: when did you last visit this unhappy place?</p> <p>Banzen said: I have never left it. Sometimes in my wanderings I have come upon a green road which promises to lead me out, but <i>ai!</i> Though the signpost greets me with a cheerful <i>Hello World</i> and tells me of wondrous places I may go with but a fingerfull of effort, disappointment invariably awaits. A thousand paces in, I feel a quake, the land tilts crazily beneath me, and the faster I code to outrace my doom the more the new road disappears under the debris of its own syntax. Now I am as you see me: a bitter old man who trusts no path but one he has blazed himself. And this is why I take such pains with you, young monk! Because of your unquenchable zeal to create new frameworks, you do out of foolishness what I now do out of cynicism. If I can teach you to recognize a road to freedom, then perhaps I can follow you down it. </p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/137 Sun, 23 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0400 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/137 <p>A nun found the scribe Qi in his study.</p> <p>“I am puzzled by the comments you have written on my documentation,” said the nun, placing a thick sheaf of papers on the scribe’s desk.</p> <p>“Ah, yes,” said Qi as he turned the pages, revealing hundreds of neatly-rendered sequence diagrams, each with a small note scrawled upon it in red ink. “You are the nun who graphically illustrates every possible circumstance in which a domain object is retrieved and displayed, regardless of how intuitive the case may seem.”</p> <p>“I strive to be thorough,” said the nun.</p> <p>“That is a great relief,” said the scribe. “If you were striving to be concise, I shudder to imagine what your thoroughness would do to the local tree population.”</p> <p>The nun tapped her finger on the red scrawl at the bottom of one page. “Yet under each diagram you have written, <i>this picture speaks 1000 words</i>.”</p> <p>“That number is in base two,” said the scribe.</p> <p>The nun blinked. <i>“Eight</i> words?”</p> <p>Qi nodded, dipping his brush in a pot of red ink. “The same eight, over and over: <i>This nun owns a tool for generating UML</i>.”</p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/136 Sat, 15 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0400 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/136 <img src="/pages/case-136/EdgingUp.jpg" alt="" title="She&#39;s really just doing it for the open bar and spicy chicken wings." class="illus-right"/> <p>Just around the time the first-year novices began to ask their masters if winter in this mountain province ever came to an end, the first winds of spring finally found their weary way up through the labyrinth of cliffs and snowbound peaks surrounding the Temple.</p> <p>Monks and nuns bustled from abbey to abbey with renewed enthusiasm, pausing only to dodge the immense icicles that had begun to crash from the eaves. Now all thoughts turned to the traditional Celebration of the End of the Long White-Space<a class="footnoteref" id="noteref-*" href="#note-*"><sup class="footnote">*</sup></a>. All manner of fruits and spirits were ordered up from villages far below. The monks of the Clan of Iron Bones had even set up a webcam atop a flatscreen monitor in the Great Hall, so that Zjing, the acrophobic nun who lived alone in a hut far below the Temple, would be able to teleconference in to the festivities.</p> <p>The party had not been long underway when Zjing suddenly excused herself. In front of her webcam she placed a hastily-penned sign declaring <i>BRB</i>.</p> <p>A few hours later the doors to the Great Hall opened, and a very pale looking nun stumbled through them. News spread throughout the crowd that the nun Zjing had returned for the first time in over a year.</p> <p>Hwídah dashed forward and thrust a bottle of strong liquor into Zjing’s hands, guessing from her expression that the cliffside paths and long swaying bridges over bottomless ravines had taken their toll on the nun’s nerves.</p> <p>After Zjing took a long pull, Yíwen said, “A thousand pardons for my curiosity, but why did you brave the steep road here, so treacherous now with melting ice and slick stone?”</p> <p>“To share important news,” said Zjing. “While observing the party, I discovered a form of communication that cannot be transmitted over IP sockets.”</p> <p>Zjing then embraced Yíwen and Hwídah, kissed their cheeks, and turned to greet the others gathering round.</p> <div class='footnotes'> <div class='footnote' id='note-*'><a href='#noteref-*'><sup class='footnote'>*</sup></a>&nbsp;Commonly abbreviated <tt>\s{99}\S</tt>.</div> </div> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/135 Sun, 09 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/135 <img src="/pages/case-135/lunch.jpg" alt="" title="For a box lunch, it&#39;s pretty high in fiber." class="illus-right"/> <p>Wangohan, a monk of the Spider Clan, stumbled upon a bug in a utility class provided by the Laughing Monkey Clan. He called upon the junior monk who was its author.</p> <p>“Your last refactoring of <tt>isHexNumber</tt> was incorrect,” said Wangohan. “Although there is no documentation, the name implies that it will only match strings of one or more hex digits. Yet your regular expression uses no anchors and the wrong quantifer. You will return true for any string in which <i>zero</i> or more hex digits are present <i>anywhere</i>&mdash;which is to say, any string at all.”</p> <p>“I ensured that the existing unit tests passed,” protested the junior monk. “Null is rejected, and legitimate hex numbers are accepted.”</p> <p>Wangohan scowled. “I tell you that a cardboard box is not a fit meal for the Emperor’s daughter, and you reply, <i>a goat did not choke on it</i>.”</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Wangohan called on the senior monk who tended the shared library and explained the problem.</p> <p>“We cannot change the implementation,” said the senior monk. “This method is now used throughout the Temple. If it suddenly rejects strings it once accepted, disaster might ensue.”</p> <p>Wangohan pounded his fist on the monk’s desk. “I tell you that a cardboard box is not a fit meal for the Emperor’s daughter, and you reply, <i>she may dislike the taste of lamb and figs</i>.”</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Wangohan called upon the head abbot of Laughing Monkey and explained the problem.</p> <p>“I will attend to the matter,” sighed the abbot. “There must be a solution which will satisfy all parties.”</p> <p>That evening Wangohan received an email from the abbot, stating that the method should now perform exactly as expected. Wangohan brought up the code and found it to be completely unchanged, save for a new comment at the top:</p> <pre> /** * isHexNumber returns true for any string * in which zero or more hex digits are present * anywhere. */ </pre> <p>Wangohan’s head fell to his desk. “Clearly a cardboard box must be a fit meal for the Emperor’s daughter, for here it is on the Imperial menu.”</p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/134 Sat, 01 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/134 <img src="/pages/case-134/pole.jpg" alt="" title="P.S. -- We *were* able to fill in a few of the shallower holes with landmines." class="illus-right"/> <p>The monk Djishin had grown dispirited from toiling on obscure projects for the One Shoe Clan, far removed from the bustle of temple life. He appealed to master Banzen for more meaningful work.</p> <p>Said Banzen, “I can think of one application whose codebase has grown confused over the years, owing to its many owners. I suspect it hides much rubbish which may be cleared away.”</p> <p>When Banzen examined Djishin’s refactoring he found the code to be well-organized and greatly simplified. The most dramatic reduction had been in the number of Data Transfer Object classes.</p> <p>“I retained only those classes which map directly to database tables,” Djishin explained proudly. “See, here is a query which joins the Campaign, Soldier, and Specialty tables, fetching but two columns from each. Previously there was a DTO whose only purpose was to return the six values for each row&mdash;shameful! Now the query returns a list of Campaign instances, each holding a list of Soldiers, each in turn holding a list of Specialties. True, the presentation layer must now traverse these objects, but they are common throughout the application and will be familiar to all who labor upon it.”</p> <p>Banzen stroked his beard. “You have adopted the ways of the Object-Relational Mapping, in a framework of your own devising. I am acquainted with the virtues of this approach, but also with its vices. These three tables have about twenty columns each; the domain objects which mirror them have likewise twenty fields. So now instead of fetching six columns per row, are you fetching sixty? Or executing the query in three passes? Or employing some sort of cache?”</p> <p>“None of these,” said Djishin with satisfaction. “I fetch only the original six columns, plus primary keys. All other fields in the domain objects are simply left uninitialized.”</p> <p>Banzen sighed and reached for his staff.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Djishin awoke outside with a pounding headache, covered by a blanket of new-fallen snow. He was alone in the middle of a tidy, perfectly level field surrounded by great pines. All gleamed white in the morning sun, and a few flurries were still spinning through the air.</p> <p>At his feet a long stick had been thrust into the ground. A note was tied around the middle. Djishin unrolled it.</p> <blockquote> I ordered the One Shoe Clan to remove all the refuse from the temple’s rubbish yard. Is it not lovely now?</blockquote> <blockquote> Sadly, this left behind many deep pits that would require too much effort to fill, so we covered the tops quite artfully with the thinnest layer of branches and leaves. Since a good snow has been forecast for this evening, I expect you will awaken to a picture of perfection.</blockquote> <blockquote> Watch your step,</blockquote> <blockquote> B. </blockquote> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/133 Thu, 20 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/133 <img src="/pages/case-133/corpse.jpg" alt="" title="DAY 54. SNOWED IN. NO FOOD LEFT. I MAY HAVE TAKEN THIS GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK A BIT TOO FAR." class="illus-right"/> <p>Master Suku was travelling with three novices in the snowy mountains, en route to a distant temple. The trail wound dizzily up the face of a great cliff, and as the sky grew dim they contemplated the long night ahead and began to seek any place that might offer some refuge from the wind.</p> <p>Eventually the group came upon a deep fissure in the rock face, just wide enough for each of them to squeeze through. It opened into a narrow cave, but when Suku lit her lantern the travellers discovered that they were not alone. A corpse, ancient yet well-preserved by the endless cold, sat huddled at the far end. One mummified hand clutched a stone, and the sloping wall opposite was covered in columns of deep, unfamiliar scratches.</p> <p>“What do you see?” Suku asked the others.</p> <p>“Markings,” said the first novice, “made by the stone.”</p> <p>“Words,” said the second, “carved by the dead.”</p> <p>“A message,” said the third, “expecting no answer.”</p> <p>Suku shook her head as she rummaged through the pockets of her travel coat. “A last request, meant for us.”</p> <p>“Can you understand the letters?” asked the first novice.</p> <p>“No,” said Suku, producing her cellphone. She aimed its camera at the scratches. “But I have unpacked source directories from many strange lands. Though the form differs from place to place, still I can tell when something is crying out <i>README</i>.</p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/132 Sat, 15 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/132 <img src="/pages/case-132/Dancer.jpg" alt="" title="Yesterday she danced the Perl regex interpreter, and it took two paramedics to untangle her arms and legs." class="illus-right"/> <p>Being snowed in together through the winter months will strain even the closest of friendships; Yíwen and Hwídah were no exception to this rule.</p> <p>Hwídah was irritated enough when her lanky roommate began dancing silently around their quarters, swinging her arms and legs within inches of Hwídah’s nose. But Hwídah’s patience came to an end one day when Yíwen set up an electric guzheng<a class="footnoteref" id="noteref-*" href="#note-*"><sup class="footnote">*</sup></a> in the center of the room and began playing it&mdash;or rather, began plucking its strings inexpertly to produce a series of dissonant, tuneless, tempoless sounds. The interlude lasted a minute, after which Yíwen sat down and scribbled on some papers. But then she rose and repeated the performance.</p> <p>After the tenth iteration, Hwídah hurled a sandal right into Yíwen’s backside, causing the girl to yelp and turn around.</p> <p><i>“What,”</i> growled Hwídah, <i>“are you doing?”</i></p> <p>Some of Yíwen’s papers fluttered to the floor. Hwídah snatched them up. They were printouts of quicksort implemented in different languages: C, Lisp, Perl, even Prolog. Each was covered with musical notations in red ink.</p> <p>“A thousand pardons for my rudeness,” said Yíwen. “I have been attempting to encode certain algorithms as movements through space, or notes in the air. If the result is not pleasing I change my encoding and try again.”</p> <p>“Why?” asked Hwídah.</p> <p>“To see what I will discover by doing it,” answered Yíwen. “We speak often of the beauty or elegance of code. Perhaps, without knowing it, we have been composing choreographies for information to dance to, and we find certain ones pleasing because they appeal to some deeper aesthetic sense common to other forms of human art. If so, then these arts would be connected. I seek that connection.”</p> <p>Hwídah considered this.</p> <p>“Thus far, the music of quicksort eludes me,” continued Yíwen with a sigh. “Perhaps my experiment is as foolish as translating songs into code and attempting to compile it. Perhaps the music of quicksort is best played by machines for their own appreciation, and not ours. Shall I quit this endeavor, and spare your nerves?”</p> <p>In answer, Hwídah produced two bits of cotton from her nightstand and put them in her ears. Yíwen bowed and returned to her instrument. Thus was peace restored.</p> <div class='footnotes'> <div class='footnote' id='note-*'><a href='#noteref-*'><sup class='footnote'>*</sup></a>&nbsp;I imagine they sound something like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJjlohZxn3w">this</a>.</div> </div> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/131 Sat, 08 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/131 <img src="/pages/case-131/skulls.jpg" alt="" title="For most people, this is second nature." class="illus-right"/> <p>A new monk of Elephant's Footprint Clan noticed that all brothers under master Bawan’s tutelage answered questions promptly, without the slightest pause. Those who hesitated were given a swift rap on the head with the master’s staff, after which they were to remain silent for the rest of the day&mdash;assuming, of course, that they had not been knocked unconscious by the blow.</p> <p>The young monk asked one of the brothers, “Why does Bawan punish those who delay in their answers?”</p> <p>“Because he believes them to be thinking,” said the elder monk. He indicated a row of skulls set on a ledge above the master’s door. Some were dull and dusty while others appeared to be freshly-parted from their previous owners, but carved into the forehead of each were the words <i>DON’T THINK</i> in the master’s unmistakable script.</p> <p>The elder monk departed, leaving the younger to ponder Bawan’s algorithm.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Some time later these same two monks were working furiously through the night to upgrade one of the clan’s venerable document databases. Critical systems were offlined while the old documents were migrated to the new servers.</p> <p>The conversion script ran for hours, yet failed near the end due to a minor problem. A second run was started, but since dawn was fast approaching the monks specified that any documents which had already been written by the first run should be skipped.</p> <p>As the second run sped through the portion of the database that the first already processed, Bawan noticed something curious. Many thousands of status messages scrolled past which looked like this:</p> <pre> document 2677091: skipped (already exists) document 2677092: skipped (already exists) document 2677093: skipped (already exists) </pre> <p>Yet once in a while one would appear which looked like this:</p> <pre> document 2677094: skipped (already exists) (** source is newer) </pre> <p>“Why the difference?” demanded Bawan.</p> <p>“I cannot say,” said the elder monk quickly. Bawan snorted and struck the man’s cheek with the back of his hand. Then he turned to the younger monk.</p> <p>“Why the difference?” he repeated.</p> <p>In that instant&mdash;his mind racing between thoughts of the master’s hand and the master’s staff&mdash;the young monk received a flash of insight.</p> <p>“Clock skew,” declared the young monk. “When we pull a source document from the old server we preserve its modification time, and then we create the target document. Yet if the system clocks disagree, the script will sometimes believe that the source is newer than the target.”</p> <p>The master indeed found a small time discrepancy between the two servers. He nodded approvingly and departed, leaving the young monk to bask in the satisfaction of having understood Bawan’s algorithm.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>One day later Bawan ordered the clan to assemble outside his office. As all waited for the master to appear, the elder monk whispered that Bawan had spent the whole day assembling definitive evidence that clock skew was responsible for the odd messages.</p> <p>“What did he find?” asked a nun.</p> <p>“Nothing of the sort,” said the elder monk. “In truth, one server had accidentally been left running during the migration, so users were still making edits in the old database. The second conversion skipped these documents with the observed warning. When traffic was diverted to the new database, subsequent user edits made restoration of the lost edits impossible. It will be a great embarrassment for the clan.”</p> <p>The discussion halted abruptly as Bawan emerged from his office with a ladder, which he then ascended to place a glistening new skull on the ledge above his door. The skull’s features recalled those of the young monk, who had not been seen all day. As before, the words <i>DON’T THINK</i> were inscribed on the forehead. And on the jawbone&mdash;invisible to anyone standing below the ledge but quite legible as the master carried it up&mdash;was the single word, <i>KNOW.</i></p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/130 Mon, 03 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/130 <p>The nun Satou approached master Kaimu and said, “My master spoke of a First Mantra which must guide the thoughts of Temple developers at all times. What is this mantra?”</p> <p>Kaimu answered, <i>“I create.</i> The essence of developer-nature is to be always in the process of creation when one is at a keyboard.”</p> <p>Satou arched an eyebrow suspiciously and asked, “If I merely fix defects, what am I creating?”</p> <p>Kaimu answered, “Harmony.”</p> <p>Satou asked, “If I refactor yet preserve behavior, what am I creating?”</p> <p>Kaimu answered, “Order.”</p> <p>Satou asked, “If I delete an unused project, what am I creating?”</p> <p>Kaimu answered, “Disk space.”</p> <p>Satou asked, “If I do nothing but browse the web, what am I creating?”</p> <p>Kaimu answered, “Missed deadlines, and a job opening.” </p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/129 Mon, 27 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/129 <p>Even on the best of days the monk Wangohan's mood would rival old vinegar, but the long bleak winter had soured it still more. Many were the target of his scorn, but none moreso than the monk Landhwa:</p> <p>“His lazyiness is no secret,” Wangohan complained to one poor novice at mealtime (who all-too-late understood why the seats near Wangohan were always empty), “yet from his masters he receives no correction. He presents the <i>illusion</i> of being industrious but in truth he is coding his own pet projects. I asked him to implement a dozen simple DAOs; he chafed at the tediousness of the task, then wasted a week developing a DAO-code-generator to spit them out!”</p> <p>When the gong called the brothers back to their cubicles, a senior monk pulled the novice aside.</p> <p>“What impression have you of our brother Wangohan?” grinned the senior monk. “Surely you have something to say on this matter, unless he has truly talked your head off.”</p> <p>The novice thought a moment.</p> <p>“Wangohan has the spirit of the mule: dedicated and hard-laboring,” said the novice. “I would trust him to carry ten thousand stones from the valley to the temple.”</p> <p>“High praise,” said the senior monk.</p> <p>“Is it?” asked the novice. “His rival Landhwa would first build a wheelbarrow.” </p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/128 Sun, 19 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/128 <img src="/pages/case-128/stairs.jpg" alt="" title="Staircases are usually undesirable in raster images, so when no one&#39;s looking we bring our skateboards to the top and antialias it." class="illus-right"/> <p>Winter had come to the Temple in full bitter force, so a novice of the Clan of Iron Bones chose to spend his leave time visiting brethren in Phong Province to the south. The monks of that place worked on the planes of a great render farm, where the directional light was gloriously warm regardless of the season.</p> <p>All morning the novice watched as learned brothers scurried to and fro, planting random number seeds, building bounding-boxes, or wrapping wire frames around even the tiniest model so that its pixels would blossom in just the right places. Thus were produced succulent scenes of every shade and hue, to please the tastes of the Imperial Court.</p> <p>As midday approached, the novice’s stomach began to rumble. Since he required an escort to venture into the temple proper, the novice approached a pleasant-looking boy about his own age, who was rigging artificial light sources above a grove of small quadtrees. The boy’s clothes were of a rough sturdy linen, yet as testament to the rigor of his duties the once-solid hues had been worn down to dithered bits, both knees were covered with bi-quadratic patches, and the right cuff showed signs of aliasing.</p> <p>“Ten thousand pardons,” said the novice (feeling all the more guilty for his own idleness) “but this miserable body will gnaw at me until I feed it a bowl of rice. Where is your master, that I may beg or barter with him?”</p> <p>“In his chambers, where very soon I must go to bring him his bowl,” said the boy. “Walk with me as I fetch it and I will fill your own as well, for at this time of year our buffers are always full.”</p> <p>The novice accepted a generous helping of rice, then followed the boy on his errand up the dim spiralling staircase which was the temple’s only hallway. It was built thus, the boy explained, to baffle stray photons.</p> <p>“For glare is ever our enemy,” said the boy, pushing open the door to his master’s chamber. “Although there are greater perils, as my master could certainly tell you, if he were here.”</p> <p>The novice followed the boy inside, puzzled. The high windowless room was lit only by the diffuse glow of a monitor on a solitary desk. The surface of the wide monitor could not be seen from this angle, but the glassy stare of the motionless, drooling old man behind it made the novice’s hair stand on end as surely as if his scalp had commanded every follicle to indicate its normal vector.</p> <p>The boy slowly set the bowl down in front of his master, then backed away, taking care to avert his eyes from the screen.</p> <p>“He is lost,” explained the boy bitterly. “You see, long ago he devised an ingenious algorithm for rendering any part of the <i>mandelblob</i> in the wink of an eye...”</p> <p>“I have heard of this shape,” interrupted the novice, unable to tear his gaze from the master’s visage. “Rumors, only... a dread equation so small it may be inscribed on my little finger, yet describing a fractal sphere of infinite complexity.”</p> <p>“Not just a sphere,” continued the boy. “A world; a worm-eaten world, implicit in the laws of number theory. Permeated by caves within caves within caves, their walls scarred by gaping chasms, yawning cracks and belching crevices. Pick any taffy-twisted tunnel, the smoothest you like, and if you zoom in far enough you’ll find that the surface wriggles and blisters and boils like putrid flesh on the cusp of liquescence, sprouting flaccid stalagmites a-crawl with mushrooms, mushrooms on mushrooms on mushrooms too tiny to be imagined, until they vanish into their own asymptotes, erupting on the other side as spores above spores above spores; and each spore is its own worm-eaten world as infinitely complex as its progenitor, yet perversely different from it too...</p> <p>“My master had barely begun to explore this shape when by some accident he zoomed too deep into one particular nanoscopic nodule, one random spore among billions, and found&mdash;or so he claimed&mdash;that it was a verisimilitudinous image of <i>our own world.</i> Yes! Mathematical mountains exactly where <i>our</i> mountains lie, bursting with needled protuberances like ferns or fir-trees&mdash;all the same sickly amber hue, like the virtual cumuloids that hover above, and the simulated shorelines gritty with picoparticles of amber sand, where amber waves of graininess stand poised to break but never do; for this is a <i>three</i>-dimensional world, and for want of fourth nothing moves, not even the people. Yes, people! Monochromatic statues grotesque in face and form, yet human down to the eyelash-hairs, to the pores in their nostrils, like caves within caves...</p> <p>“But in his trembling haste to plumb the depths of this flyspeck world, my master clicked left instead of right. His cursor jumped sideways and the crucial coordinates were lost forever. I am told his howls of anguish could be heard in the surrounding hills. Every monk of the temple rushed to this chamber, frantic to learn what great disaster had befallen. And thus did he relate the tale of his discovery.</p> <p>“The other masters laughed at him, called him a liar or mad. Even monks of low station shunned him. So he set out to clear his name by finding those fateful coordinates again.</p> <p>“Days became weeks, became months, became years, and now see what he is reduced to: a prisoner of the Unit Sphere, forever wandering while going nowhere, held captive by his own obsession. For a time, perhaps, he believed he had stumbled onto some Great Truth of the Universe, a calculable correspondence between the world of flesh and the one of figures. Now I cannot guess what landscapes he wanders, or why&mdash;nor would I wish to, lest I succumb to some irresistable fascination and so share his fate. It is said that fore-warned is fore-armed, but for me at least... I fear my mind. When the real meets the imaginary, their product is always complex.”</p> <p>The novice edged forward to peer around the edge of the screen, but the boy stopped him.</p> <p>“Take your rice and leave this cursed place,” said the boy. “And bring this one truth back to your own temple: that the Render Farm of Phong Province is no better than a poppy field, where daily we sow the doom of our people.”</p> <p>“I do not see,” said the novice.</p> <p>“The Emperor has but to name a pleasure&mdash;the thrill of battle among the stars, the viewing of immodest persons engaged in lecherous activities&mdash;and we will serve it to his private chambers in six million pixels of sixteen million colors at sixty frames a second. But do not envy him this. Instead fear the day that you and I enjoy the same liberty. For though we have created an eternity of wonders here, none of us are given an eternity to explore them. How precious is time; and how empty, ultimately, is any world but our own.” </p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/127 Sun, 12 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/127 <p>The young master Kaimu was sifting through his inbox when he came upon a message from an unknown sender:</p> <blockquote> My body is ugly, my limbs awkward, my face unseemly&mdash;<br /> thus no one looks upon me and desires my companionship. <br /> I have lived many years alone.</blockquote> <blockquote> My heart sits heavy for I have no one to lighten it&mdash;<br /> thus I pass each night coding in the solitude of my quarters. <br /> Drink and forgetful slumber are my only escape.</blockquote> <blockquote> My soul is ever in pain&mdash;<br /> thus misery follows wherever I tread. <br /> Each day can be no better than the one before.</blockquote> <blockquote> My mind is dulled from meaningless employment&mdash;<br /> thus I have achieved nothing of worth or renown. <br /> When I die, only dust will remain.</blockquote> <blockquote> My life is friendless, joyless, hopeless, pointless. <br /> What wisdom can you offer?</blockquote> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Kaimu took the letter to Suku, saying: “I am but a theoretician, and know nothing of being a prisoner to ugliness. You have mastered the achievement of sublime beauty through incremental change. What wisdom can you offer?”</p> <p>Suku replied: “I, too, suffer imperfections of the flesh, though they are hidden from view. If the body is an application, then its source code is uneditable and we must bear the ungainly user interface as with any legacy system. Alas, I cannot refactor it.”</p> <p>Kaimu bowed and went out.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Kaimu took the letter to Bawan, saying: “I am but a theoretician, and know nothing of the burden of solitude. You have mastered all physical representations of the Loneliest Number. What wisdom can you offer?”</p> <p>Bawan replied: “I niggle over zeroes and ones because when I look up from my screen the darkness closes in. If the heart is half an equation that must be balanced against an equals-sign, then I too peer across the divide into emptiness. Alas, I cannot solve for your <i>x</i> when there is an unknown <i>y</i>.”</p> <p>Kaimu bowed and went out.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Kaimu took the letter to Yishi-Shing, saying: “I am but a theoretician, and know nothing of souls in pain. You have mastered the inner workings of machines. What wisdom can you offer?”</p> <p>Yishi-Shing replied: “What is a machine, but an artifact meant to give us the illusion of control, when in truth we cannot control even our need to draw the next breath? If the soul is a machine, then its case is the blackest of boxes and its keyboard forever hidden from the sight of mankind. Alas, I cannot administer it.”</p> <p>Kaimu bowed and went out.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Kaimu took the letter to Banzen, saying: “I am but a theoretician, and know nothing of a life of futility. You have mastered the ways of attaining perfection in code. What wisdom can you offer?”</p> <p>Banzen replied: “Do not mistake obsession for ambition, or reputation for accomplishment! Perfection is my purpose only because the lack of it is my pain. Yet what can be perfect when even number theory is incomplete? What can endure when the Universe itself is destined to unravel? And here am I: a miserable wretch who will not be content until his brush has come to rest upon the last digit of <i>pi</i>! If the mind is a fractal from which infinite futures might blossom, still we are all Cantor dust in the end. Alas, I cannot say how to make something from what must eventually become nothing.”</p> <p>Kaimu bowed and went out.</p> <img class="break" src="/images/hrule.png" alt="- - -" /> <p>Kaimu happened upon the monk Shinpuru, pruning his vines in the greenhouse. As the monk was older then he, Kaimu told Shinpuru of the letter. “No master is equal to this matter. What wisdom can you offer?”</p> <p>Shinpuru thought a moment, and said half to himself:</p> <p>“If the body cannot be modified, then its form must suffice. If the heart cannot be balanced, then it must stand alone. If the soul cannot be directed, then we must yield to it. And if the mind is destined to be lost, then all that matters is the present.”</p> <p>Then the monk thought a little more, and said to Kaimu:</p> <p>“Begun your reply thus: When the great wolf Desire pulls your sledge across the ice, its cub Disappointment will surely nip at your heels. You must therefore yoke yourself to yourself...</p> <p>“Then advise your correspondent: Find within your heart any things that give you a measure of joy, no matter how ridiculous they may seem. Fill every moment possible with these little joys. If they can be shared, so much the better: go to distant places, meet unfamiliar people, but take care not to seek companions among them. Seek nothing except to share your craft with those who ask it of you. Every moment spent thus will be your legacy.”</p> <p>Shinpuru resumed his pruning. “If we seek to change the inner state of an application but we cannot change its code, then we must change its inputs and hope for the best. It is not by whim that I became a gardener! Alas, I cannot know what will bear fruit for others.” </p> http://thecodelesscode.com/case/126 Sun, 05 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0500 http://thecodelesscode.com/case/126 <img src="/pages/case-126/Puddle.jpg" alt="" title="Stop looking up her robes. Yes, I&#39;m talking to YOU." class="illus-right"/> <p>Like many her age, the young nun Satou had an irrepressible curiosity: the less she knew about a thing, the more she wanted to try it. Thus she had elected to use multithreading to improve performance in her log processing utility, despite master Banzen's cautions.</p> <p>Banzen reviewed her code, then invited the nun to discuss his findings during the morning tea break.</p> <p>When Satou had seated herself in the master’s tea room, Banzen picked up an empty bowl with his left hand while his right hand took a ladle of boiling-hot water from the pot and poured it directly onto Satou’s tatami mat. Satou yelped in surprise, leaping from the floor to avoid being scalded. The master calmly set the bowl in the center of the spreading puddle as his right hand beat the puddle with a whisk. Then his left hand reached for a bamboo scoop and began to spoon green tea powder into the dry bowl.</p> <p>“Now,” said Banzen. “Let us discuss race conditions.”</p> <h2>Qi’s commentary</h2> <p>But first, sit down and come in.</p> <h2>Qi’s poem</h2> <p>Flowing from my brush <br /> Glowing on my screen <br /> Four lines readable in any order <br /> The essence of thread safety <br /></p>