My reading of that is "The unix way is that software should be simple and elegant. The unix way is also that software should work, even if that means pragmatically eschewing elegance and simplicity. You must find a balance between these two things".
The last abstract-sounding bit, "When the eagle flies, does it forget that its feet have touched the ground? When the tiger lands upon its prey, does it forget its moment in the air?", I take as meaning:
"The air is beautiful and pure, free of pragmatic reality and time constraints and so on. The ground is the pragmatic reality. You must keep both in mind, and write beautiful code at times, and also sometimes write awful code to deal with reality at times".
Elegant code sometimes does not respect the restrictions imposed by reality, such as bandwidth, memory size, I/O speeds, stack sizes, file descriptor limits, user experience, etc.
> “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.”
I love how enduring is Microsoft's reputation in some circles.
It was the certs specifically. Anyone could get one if they had a couple hundred bucks and could cram a bunch of facts. MCSE required more exams, but still you were basically just memorizing stuff and taking tests. Yet for a time (during the 90s-2000s IT boom) anyone could get hired if they had certs. The more acronyms after your name, the better.
Sort of like the people today who take a 2-week JavaScript course and then get hired for 6 figures, but at least the people with the certs had to take some exams.
It is l33t. Luckily when the f3ds showed up at my door,the d1sks were buried and I was not home. My roommate figured they may want pr0n. They disembarked.
The day after the stranger from Woot departed once more, a new student approached Master Foo as he was pruning the plum trees.
“I have heard of your reputation,” the student said, bowing low. “They say you teach the Way of Unix, not for power, but for understanding. May I learn at your feet?”
Master Foo nodded. “What is it you seek?”
“I wish to master the system,” the student said, “to understand every process, every socket, every thread of the great Net. I seek elegance, not exploits.”
“You speak wisely,” said Master Foo. Then he scribbled an IP address on a small bamboo slip. “Crack this machine. Its defenses are trivial. Return and tell me what you learn.”
The student departed.
The next morning, he returned, his robes slightly rumpled but his eyes alight with triumph.
“Master,” he said, “the machine was a decoy for an abandoned cryptocurrency exchange node. I rewrote a dormant smart contract and siphoned off forgotten tokens. The wallet had a bug, my code fixed it. I now possess wealth beyond imagining.”
“You have reported this to the rightful owners?” asked Master Foo.
“There are none,” said the student. “The domain expired, the company dissolved, and the blockchain is immutable. I wrote no logs, touched no traceable endpoints, and masked every call behind a thousand proxies. I am free and unseen.”
“Then you are a thief,” said Master Foo.
“I am not caught,” replied the student. “What I took, no one missed. What I altered, no one saw. And what I gained, no one can take from me.”
Master Foo was silent for a time.
At last, he said, “The first student broke the law and found caution. You have broken nothing and found profit.”
He bowed low to the student.
“Here,” said Master Foo, “is the end of my teaching. Today, you have taught me.”
One evening, as Master Foo swept the temple steps, a student came to him with furrowed brow.
“Master,” she said. “I do not understand the story of the two who cracked the machine.”
Master Foo did not look up.
“They did the same thing,” she said. “One was punished and changed. The other walked free and grew proud. Yet you praised neither. You said you were enlightened. Why?”
Master Foo set the broom aside.
“The first was reckless,” he said. “He broke in and was caught. Pain brought him humility. That was the beginning of wisdom.”
“And the second?” she asked.
“He was careful,” said Master Foo. “He did the same. But he was not caught. He gained wealth. He gained pride. He believed he had mastered the Way.”
He looked toward the fading light.
“I gave him a cleaner path. No watchers. No traps. I thought if he still chose restraint, it would reveal his heart.”
He paused.
“I was wrong.”
The student stood silently.
“They chose the same,” said Master Foo. “But the world answered differently. One was struck by pain. The other soothed by silence. Each believed he understood. Neither truly did.”
She bowed her head.
“The machine was a mirror,” she said. “But the lesson was not for them.”
Master Foo nodded.
“No,” he said. “They saw their reflections, and mistook them for truth.”
“And the difference between their tests?” she asked. “Why one path was watched, and the other open?”
“It seemed important once,” said Master Foo. “But now I see, it does not matter.”
“Because neither of them was real,” she said quietly.
Master Foo looked at her.
“Not the first. Not the second.”
He paused.
“Not even the one who stands before me now.”
She raised her eyes.
“Then who was the lesson for?”
Master Foo smiled.
“For the one who is still watching. Still wondering. Still here.”
He picked up the broom and swept the dust from the stone.
And remember that the images have mouseover texts and names (especially clan names) occasionally have some backstory... before you get through the first 100 and then discover this.
> Specialists in the persistence tier, where the Temple’s most precious resource is managed—by which I mean data, not alcohol, although they have a fair amount of that as well to cope with the stress of Temple life. Despite this, the clan has strict rules regarding inebriation. A monk is absolutely not allowed to code while drinking unless he really, really wants to. Any monk caught violating this rule is punished by having to buy the next round.
> The clan takes its name from the immense ivory-panelled server cabinet which houses the Temple’s most venerable DBMS hosts. This cabinet is known affectionately as the Great White Elephant, no doubt for its flawless memory. However it is worth noting that elephants do sometimes forget, which is why the Temple has hot replication to a colocation site which houses the Emergency Backup Elephant.
The whole story, the vibe of the story, the moral of the story, the use of the word "crack"; it comes off pungently as if written by a professional Unix systems administrator.
The moral of the story is not about cracking or getting arrested. It is a metaphor for the danger of taking shortcuts, just like certain other shortcuts in programming that are currently popular and also come with their own version of 1337 language.
And about the tools that enable ScriptKiddies or their modern equivalents to achieve some fast results, for which they have to pay later.
Enlighten us oh wise one then, how would they think?
But I assume you mean the moral of the story is to never break into computers?
I think you are wrong about that. I see the moral as, don't break into computers for the lulz. Especiall not, if you don't know what you are doing.
The master clearly can break into systems. But doesn't do it. He feels no need to take stupid risks to proof his skills.
I'm not "wise", I was just there at the time. Nobody ever looked at an easy to pop system and thought "oh, if I rexd into this host, the FBI is going to come knocking on my door". The prevailing spirit of the time was pretty close to "the only way to get anyone to show up at your door is to steal and use credit card numbers".
The story isn't about breaking into computers; it's drawing an analogy, of a careless action and an undesired consequence. My problem with it is that it's an undesired consequence of the variety dreamt of by Unix systems administrators of the time (we're gonna catch those rascally hackers and they're gonna get it!) and seen in the real world ~never. That doesn't make the moral of the story wrong (be careful), just cringe.
As a former UNIX administrator (now cloud/devops/SRE/whatever), I can attest that when seasoned professionals are tasked to maintain systems that often run critical code (for finance, government, healthcare, etc) where we are often at the mercy of other groups (accountants, management, etc) treating us like a "cost centre" where proper investment can be hard will result in a very jaded and cynical outlook.
This is as much a defence mechanism as it is a calling card.
Did anyone else hear mystical music in the background and smell fragrantly burning incense while they read that? I loved this, short, funny, interesting.
These are still online at their original location: <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/>
These are…abstract.
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/two_paths.html
Can’t figure out the point
My reading of that is "The unix way is that software should be simple and elegant. The unix way is also that software should work, even if that means pragmatically eschewing elegance and simplicity. You must find a balance between these two things".
The last abstract-sounding bit, "When the eagle flies, does it forget that its feet have touched the ground? When the tiger lands upon its prey, does it forget its moment in the air?", I take as meaning:
"The air is beautiful and pure, free of pragmatic reality and time constraints and so on. The ground is the pragmatic reality. You must keep both in mind, and write beautiful code at times, and also sometimes write awful code to deal with reality at times".
So "elegance" and "no bugs" are at odds?
Interesting, that's not my intuition....
Elegant code sometimes does not respect the restrictions imposed by reality, such as bandwidth, memory size, I/O speeds, stack sizes, file descriptor limits, user experience, etc.
Read the whole Master Foo archive here: https://soda.privatevoid.net/foo/
I've always known these as Hacker Koans.
> “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.”
I love how enduring is Microsoft's reputation in some circles.
It was the certs specifically. Anyone could get one if they had a couple hundred bucks and could cram a bunch of facts. MCSE required more exams, but still you were basically just memorizing stuff and taking tests. Yet for a time (during the 90s-2000s IT boom) anyone could get hired if they had certs. The more acronyms after your name, the better.
Sort of like the people today who take a 2-week JavaScript course and then get hired for 6 figures, but at least the people with the certs had to take some exams.
Thanks for sharing, I had no idea these existed until today! These are quite short, and the recruiter one is very accurate haha
This is beautiful and hilarious. Thanks!
It is l33t. Luckily when the f3ds showed up at my door,the d1sks were buried and I was not home. My roommate figured they may want pr0n. They disembarked.
https://everything2.com/title/The+Lord%2527s+Prayer%253A+l33...
Similar to Tao of Programming https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html
The day after the stranger from Woot departed once more, a new student approached Master Foo as he was pruning the plum trees.
“I have heard of your reputation,” the student said, bowing low. “They say you teach the Way of Unix, not for power, but for understanding. May I learn at your feet?”
Master Foo nodded. “What is it you seek?”
“I wish to master the system,” the student said, “to understand every process, every socket, every thread of the great Net. I seek elegance, not exploits.”
“You speak wisely,” said Master Foo. Then he scribbled an IP address on a small bamboo slip. “Crack this machine. Its defenses are trivial. Return and tell me what you learn.”
The student departed.
The next morning, he returned, his robes slightly rumpled but his eyes alight with triumph.
“Master,” he said, “the machine was a decoy for an abandoned cryptocurrency exchange node. I rewrote a dormant smart contract and siphoned off forgotten tokens. The wallet had a bug, my code fixed it. I now possess wealth beyond imagining.”
“You have reported this to the rightful owners?” asked Master Foo.
“There are none,” said the student. “The domain expired, the company dissolved, and the blockchain is immutable. I wrote no logs, touched no traceable endpoints, and masked every call behind a thousand proxies. I am free and unseen.”
“Then you are a thief,” said Master Foo.
“I am not caught,” replied the student. “What I took, no one missed. What I altered, no one saw. And what I gained, no one can take from me.”
Master Foo was silent for a time.
At last, he said, “The first student broke the law and found caution. You have broken nothing and found profit.”
He bowed low to the student.
“Here,” said Master Foo, “is the end of my teaching. Today, you have taught me.”
On hearing this, the student was puzzled.
But Master Foo was enlightened.
I’m curious what was the intended lesson to crack that machine.
Many seasons passed.
One evening, as Master Foo swept the temple steps, a student came to him with furrowed brow.
“Master,” she said. “I do not understand the story of the two who cracked the machine.”
Master Foo did not look up.
“They did the same thing,” she said. “One was punished and changed. The other walked free and grew proud. Yet you praised neither. You said you were enlightened. Why?”
Master Foo set the broom aside.
“The first was reckless,” he said. “He broke in and was caught. Pain brought him humility. That was the beginning of wisdom.”
“And the second?” she asked.
“He was careful,” said Master Foo. “He did the same. But he was not caught. He gained wealth. He gained pride. He believed he had mastered the Way.”
He looked toward the fading light.
“I gave him a cleaner path. No watchers. No traps. I thought if he still chose restraint, it would reveal his heart.”
He paused.
“I was wrong.”
The student stood silently.
“They chose the same,” said Master Foo. “But the world answered differently. One was struck by pain. The other soothed by silence. Each believed he understood. Neither truly did.”
She bowed her head.
“The machine was a mirror,” she said. “But the lesson was not for them.”
Master Foo nodded.
“No,” he said. “They saw their reflections, and mistook them for truth.”
“And the difference between their tests?” she asked. “Why one path was watched, and the other open?”
“It seemed important once,” said Master Foo. “But now I see, it does not matter.”
“Because neither of them was real,” she said quietly.
Master Foo looked at her.
“Not the first. Not the second.”
He paused.
“Not even the one who stands before me now.”
She raised her eyes.
“Then who was the lesson for?”
Master Foo smiled.
“For the one who is still watching. Still wondering. Still here.”
He picked up the broom and swept the dust from the stone.
You do not speak. You do not need to.
You were enlightened.
A cookie jar containing even one cookie is guarded by paradox and confusion.
Boot to the head.
And another one for Jenny and the wimp.
Another thing in a similar vein is The Codeless Code: http://thecodelesscode.com/contents
Vim koans are my favourite
https://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vim-koans/
And remember that the images have mouseover texts and names (especially clan names) occasionally have some backstory... before you get through the first 100 and then discover this.
http://thecodelesscode.com/names/Elephant%27s+Footprint+Clan
> Specialists in the persistence tier, where the Temple’s most precious resource is managed—by which I mean data, not alcohol, although they have a fair amount of that as well to cope with the stress of Temple life. Despite this, the clan has strict rules regarding inebriation. A monk is absolutely not allowed to code while drinking unless he really, really wants to. Any monk caught violating this rule is punished by having to buy the next round.
> The clan takes its name from the immense ivory-panelled server cabinet which houses the Temple’s most venerable DBMS hosts. This cabinet is known affectionately as the Great White Elephant, no doubt for its flawless memory. However it is worth noting that elephants do sometimes forget, which is why the Temple has hot replication to a colocation site which houses the Emergency Backup Elephant.
This would have been cringe even in 1996.
The whole story, or the 3x7r3m3 13375p34k 0f 7h3 5k1dd13?
The whole story, the vibe of the story, the moral of the story, the use of the word "crack"; it comes off pungently as if written by a professional Unix systems administrator.
The moral of the story is not about cracking or getting arrested. It is a metaphor for the danger of taking shortcuts, just like certain other shortcuts in programming that are currently popular and also come with their own version of 1337 language.
And about the tools that enable ScriptKiddies or their modern equivalents to achieve some fast results, for which they have to pay later.
Yeah, no, I get that, it's just not how anybody who actually broke into computers would think about this.
And it's not about those people. It's "Master Foo and the Script Kiddie", not "Master Foo and the Professional Red-Teamer".
It's about a fictional archetype, and the story isn't meant to be taken literally, it's illustrative for the sake of a lesson.
I'm aware of what the story is meant to be about. I'm saying it's cringe, not that people should take shortcuts on everything.
Boot to the head.
Enlighten us oh wise one then, how would they think?
But I assume you mean the moral of the story is to never break into computers?
I think you are wrong about that. I see the moral as, don't break into computers for the lulz. Especiall not, if you don't know what you are doing. The master clearly can break into systems. But doesn't do it. He feels no need to take stupid risks to proof his skills.
I'm not "wise", I was just there at the time. Nobody ever looked at an easy to pop system and thought "oh, if I rexd into this host, the FBI is going to come knocking on my door". The prevailing spirit of the time was pretty close to "the only way to get anyone to show up at your door is to steal and use credit card numbers".
The story isn't about breaking into computers; it's drawing an analogy, of a careless action and an undesired consequence. My problem with it is that it's an undesired consequence of the variety dreamt of by Unix systems administrators of the time (we're gonna catch those rascally hackers and they're gonna get it!) and seen in the real world ~never. That doesn't make the moral of the story wrong (be careful), just cringe.
As a former UNIX administrator (now cloud/devops/SRE/whatever), I can attest that when seasoned professionals are tasked to maintain systems that often run critical code (for finance, government, healthcare, etc) where we are often at the mercy of other groups (accountants, management, etc) treating us like a "cost centre" where proper investment can be hard will result in a very jaded and cynical outlook.
This is as much a defence mechanism as it is a calling card.
What’s wrong with professional sysadmins? (It’s sysadmin appreciation day this Friday btw)
Nothing at all.
The patchtape giveth,and the patchtape taketh away.
Not sure if you meant that year literally but I've 1996'd the title for now
Eek, no, I don't know when this was written! :)
Seems to be 2003?
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Master+Foo+and+the+Script...
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Master+Foo+and+the+Script...
Reminds me of the Acts of Gord, but with less malice.
https://www.actsofgord.com/
Did anyone else hear mystical music in the background and smell fragrantly burning incense while they read that? I loved this, short, funny, interesting.
It's crazy how cringey "leet speak" looks now. Even words like "woot"
The famous merchandizing website is still alive, but purchased by Bezos, and repurposed into an Amazon dot com "sales" frontpiece.
I wonder what would happen if Master Foo met the BOFH ..