codeless_code 0.1.2

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-127.txt

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+Date: 2014-01-12
+Title: State Change
+Number: 127
+Names: Kaimu, Suku, Bawan, Banzen, Yishi-Shing, Shinpuru
+Topics: depression, loneliness, purpose, morale
+Geekiness: 1
+Credits: Inspired by a request from a reader.  Many thanks to Irving Rivas for the spelling corrections.
+
+The young master [[Kaimu]] was sifting through his inbox when
+he came upon a message from an unknown sender:
+
+    My body is ugly, my limbs awkward, my face unseemly -- //
+    thus no one looks upon me and desires my companionship. //
+    I have lived many years alone.
+
+    My heart sits heavy for I have no one to lighten it -- //
+    thus I pass each night coding in the solitude of my quarters. //
+    Drink and forgetful slumber are my only escape.
+
+    My soul is ever in pain -- //
+    thus misery follows wherever I tread. //
+    Each day can be no better than the one before.
+
+    My mind is dulled from meaningless employment -- //
+    thus I have achieved nothing of worth or renown. //
+    When I die, only dust will remain.
+
+    My life is friendless, joyless, hopeless, pointless. //
+    What wisdom can you offer?
+
+- - -
+
+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?"
+
+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."
+
+Kaimu bowed and went out.
+
+- - -
+
+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?"
+
+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 /x/ when there is an unknown /y/."
+
+Kaimu bowed and went out.
+
+- - -
+
+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?"
+
+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."
+
+Kaimu bowed and went out.
+
+- - -
+
+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?"
+
+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
+/pi/!  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."
+
+Kaimu bowed and went out.
+
+- - -
+
+Kaimu happened upon the monk [[Shinpuru]], pruning his vines
+in the greenhouse.  As the monk was older than he, Kaimu
+told Shinpuru of the letter.  "No master is equal to this matter.
+What wisdom can you offer?"
+
+Shinpuru thought a moment, and said half to himself:
+
+"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."
+
+Then the monk thought a little more, and said to Kaimu:
+
+"Begin 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...
+
+"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."
+
+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."

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-128.txt

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+Date: 2014-01-19
+Title: The Prison of Infinite Pleasures
+Number: 128
+Geekiness: 3
+Names: Clan of Iron Bones
+Topics: philosophy, distraction, obsession, addiction, simulation, image rendering, fractals, time
+Illus.0.src: stairs.jpg
+Illus.0.title: Staircases are usually undesirable in raster images, so when no one's looking we bring our skateboards to the top and antialias it.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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?"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+The boy slowly set the bowl down in front of his master,
+then backed away, taking care to avert his eyes from the
+screen.
+
+"He is lost," explained the boy bitterly.  "You see, long
+ago he devised an ingenious algorithm for rendering any
+part of the /mandelblob/ in the wink of an eye..."
+
+"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."
+
+"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...
+
+"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 -- or so he claimed -- that it was a
+verisimilitudinous image of <i>our own world.</i> Yes!
+Mathematical mountains exactly where /our/ mountains lie,
+bursting with needled protuberances like ferns or fir-trees
+-- 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...
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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 -- 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."
+
+The novice edged forward to peer around the edge of the
+screen, but the boy stopped him.
+
+"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."
+
+"I do not see," said the novice.
+
+"The Emperor has but to name a pleasure -- the thrill of
+battle among the stars, the viewing of immodest persons
+engaged in lecherous activities -- 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."

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-129.txt

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+Date: 2014-01-27
+Title: Like a Rolling Stone
+Number: 129
+Names: Landhwa, Wangohan
+Topics: laziness, joy-hacking, utilities
+Geekiness: 2
+
+Even on the best of days the monk [[Wangohan|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]]:
+
+"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
+/illusion/ 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!"
+
+When the gong called the brothers back to their cubicles,
+a senior monk pulled the novice aside.
+
+"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."
+
+The novice thought a moment.
+
+"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."
+
+"High praise," said the senior monk.
+
+"Is it?" asked the novice.  "His rival Landhwa would first
+build a wheelbarrow."

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-13.txt

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+Title: Evolution
+Number: 13
+Date: 2010-11-12
+Geekiness: 0
+Topics: improvement, code reviews
+Names: Banzen
+
+A novice studied the Java master's{{*}} code and adopted the
+master's style to an exacting degree: the design patterns
+employed, the naming conventions for variables, the number
+of spaces used to indent each nested block.  Even the
+comments were written in an impressive imitation of the
+master's own voice.
+
+During his next code review, the novice was surprised to
+find the Java master tremendously displeased.
+
+"But, master," protested the student.  "I have followed your
+example down to the final semicolon.  See, here is a utility
+class you wrote only last month: is it not as like to my own
+code as two eggs from the same clutch?"
+
+"And therein lies the problem," scowled the
+master. "Yesterday I was a fool, the week before an idiot,
+and last month an imbecile.  Don't show me code I might
+have written yesterday.  Show me code as I will write it
+tomorrow."
+
+
+{{*}} Probably [[Banzen]].

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-130.txt

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+Date: 2014-02-03
+Title: The First Mantra
+Number: 130
+Names: Satou, Kaimu
+Topics: creativity, refactoring, philosophy
+Geekiness: 1
+Illus.0.title: "If I stand here and ask questions all day, what am I creating?" "Annoyance."
+
+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?"
+
+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."
+
+Satou arched an eyebrow suspiciously and asked,
+"If I merely fix defects, what am I creating?"
+
+Kaimu answered, "Harmony."
+
+Satou asked, "If I refactor yet preserve behavior, what am I creating?"
+
+Kaimu answered, "Order."
+
+Satou asked, "If I delete an unused project, what am I creating?"
+
+Kaimu answered, "Disk space."
+
+Satou asked, "If I do nothing but browse the web, what am I creating?"
+
+Kaimu answered, "Missed deadlines, and a job opening."

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-131.txt

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+Date: 2014-02-08
+Title: Don't Think
+Number: 131
+Names: Bawan
+Topics: production support
+Geekiness: 2
+Illus.0.src: skulls.jpg
+Illus.0.par: 0
+Illus.0.title: For most people, this is second nature.
+
+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 -- assuming, of course, that they had
+not been knocked unconscious by the blow.
+
+The young monk asked one of the brothers, "Why does Bawan
+punish those who delay in their answers?"
+
+"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 /DON'T
+THINK/ in the master's unmistakable script.
+
+The elder monk departed, leaving the younger to ponder
+Bawan's algorithm.
+
+- - -
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+<pre>
+   document 2677091: skipped (already exists)
+   document 2677092: skipped (already exists)
+   document 2677093: skipped (already exists)
+</pre>
+
+Yet once in a while one would appear which looked like this:
+
+<pre>
+   document 2677094: skipped (already exists) (** source is newer)
+</pre>
+
+"Why the difference?" demanded Bawan.
+
+"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.
+
+"Why the difference?" he repeated.
+
+In that instant -- his mind racing between thoughts of the
+master's hand and the master's staff -- the young monk
+received a flash of insight.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+- - -
+
+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.
+
+"What did he find?" asked a nun.
+
+"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."
+
+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 /DON'T THINK/
+were inscribed on the forehead.  And on the jawbone --
+invisible to anyone standing below the ledge but quite
+legible as the master carried it up -- was the single word,
+<i>KNOW.</i>
+
+

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-132.txt

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+Title: Interpreter
+Number: 132
+Date: 2014-02-15
+Geekiness: 3
+Names: Yíwen, Hwídah
+Topics: art, experimenting, discovery, encoding, translation, quicksort, music, Perl
+Illus.0.src: Dancer.jpg
+Illus.0.title: Yesterday she danced the Perl regex interpreter, and it took two paramedics to untangle her arms and legs.
+Credits: Inspired by the performance art of Jennifer Gwirtz at <a href="http://performancelab.org/">Right Brain Performancelab</a>.
+
+
+Being snowed in together through the winter months will
+strain even the closest of friendships; [[Yíwen]] and
+[[Hwídah]] were no exception to this rule.
+
+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{{*}} in the center of the room and began
+playing it -- 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.
+
+After the tenth iteration, Hwídah hurled a sandal
+right into Yíwen's backside, causing the girl to yelp and
+turn around.
+
+<i>"What,"</i> growled Hwídah, <i>"are you doing?"</i>
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"Why?" asked Hwídah.
+
+"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."
+
+Hwídah considered this.
+
+"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?"
+
+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.
+
+
+{{*}} I imagine they sound something like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJjlohZxn3w">this</a>.

data/data/the-codeless-code/en-qi/case-133.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+Title: Dead Language
+Number: 133
+Date: 2014-02-20
+Geekiness: 2
+Names: Suku
+Topics: README, communication
+Illus.0.src: corpse.jpg
+Illus.0.par: 0
+Illus.0.title: DAY 54.  SNOWED IN.  NO FOOD LEFT.  I MAY HAVE TAKEN THIS GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK A BIT TOO FAR.
+Credits: Cave background adapted from a photo of Gough's Cave, 2009-03-10 by Kurt Thomas Hunt (released under Creative Commons 2.0)
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What do you see?" Suku asked the others.
+
+"Markings," said the first novice, "made by the stone."
+
+"Words," said the second, "carved by the dead."
+
+"A message," said the third, "expecting no answer."
+
+Suku shook her head as she rummaged through the pockets of
+her travel coat.  "A last request, meant for us."
+
+"Can you understand the letters?" asked the first novice.
+
+"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 /README/.
+
+
+
+
+