Friday, December 17, 2004

Master Foo and the Unix Zealot

A Unix zealot, having heard that Master Foo was wise in the Great Way of Unix, came to him for instruction. Master Foo said to him:

“When the Patriarch Thompson invented Unix, he did not understand it. Then he gained in understanding, and no longer invented it”.

“When the Patriarch McIlroy invented the pipe, he knew that it would transform software, but did not know that it would transform mind”.

“When the Patriarch Ritchie invented C, he condemned programmers to a thousand hells of buffer overruns, heap corruption, and stale-pointer bugs”.

“Truly, the Patriarchs were blind and foolish!”

The zealot was greatly angered by the Master's words.

“These enlightened ones”, he protested. “gave us the Great Way of Unix. Surely, if we mock them we will lose merit and be reborn as beasts or MCSEs”.

“Is your code ever completely without stain and flaw?” demanded Master Foo.

“No”, admitted the zealot, “no man's is”.

“The wisdom of the Patriarchs”, said Master Foo, “was that they knew they were fools”.

Upon hearing this, the zealot was enlightened.

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Taken from "Rootless Root - The unix koans of Master Foo "
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/unix_koans.html

6 comments:

PesoBoy's Home said...

I hope our friend Sajith is doing well. I see no comment from him. Not even a Ha Ha.... :-/

Amar

sajith said...

I'm still around! I was just thinking.

http://www.nozen.com/holyman.htm

That one also says in some way.

PesoBoy's Home said...

I hope the space ship returns back with Shiv safely.

We miss you ....

Amar

P.S. Say hey to all those in Mars... ;-)

PesoBoy's Home said...

Take a look at these -
http://faculty.dbcc.cc.fl.us/phillips/CTS2321_Linux/koans_of_master_foo.htm

Regards
Amar

sajith said...

GRRRRR X-( Shiv, where are you? WRITE!

Shiv said...

Dear Amar and TS


Sorry, was busy with exams and stuff.
Afterall I got to study at times. ;-)

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