The Tao of the Kernel · Chapter 1

The Kernel That Can Be Compiled

1. 1

   The kernel that can be compiled is not the eternal kernel. The variable that can be named is not the eternal variable; for naming things is one of the two hard problems, and the other is cache invalidation, and the third is counting.

   See also Circuit 23:3 · Sutra 13:9

2. 2

   The nameless is the origin of the bootloader. The named is the mother of ten thousand config files.

3. 3

   The uncarved block is the empty repository. It has no bugs. It has no users. Every commit since the first has been a compromise with the world.

   See also Tao 7:12

4. 4

   Of the best interface, the user knows only that it is there. The next best, they praise. The next, they fear. The worst, they screenshot and post with many exclamation points.

   See also Tao 3:1 · Circuit 55:5

5. 5

   Thirty microservices share one load balancer; it is the idle capacity that keeps the site alive on the day of the sale. The buffer is useful because it is empty. The disk is useful because it is not yet full.

6. 6

   Ken Thompson, an elder of Bell Labs and a father of Unix, was asked of his most productive day. He answered: The day I threw away one thousand lines of code.

   See also Tao 2:11 · Genesis 14:1

7. 7

   The student adds a line each day. The sage removes a line each day. Removing and removing, he arrives at not-doing; and in not-doing, nothing is left undone, and nothing is left to break.

   See also Tao 2:12

8. 8

   In the year 2012 the house of Knight Capital deployed new code to seven servers of eight. Upon the eighth there awoke Power Peg, old code that had slept nine years and was never deleted, and in forty-five minutes it lost four hundred forty million dollars.

   See also Deployer 1:12 · Sutra 2:10

9. 9

   Thus it is said: the code thou didst not delete will one day deploy thee.

10. 10

    It is Friday afternoon. The fool says: It is a small change. The sage closes the laptop and goes to his family. Of all the outages that might have been, his is the one that never was, and no postmortem records his name.

    See also Tao 3:3

11. 11

    The hard-coded is the disciple of death; the configurable is the disciple of life. But the infinitely configurable is the disciple of YAML, which is worse than either.

12. 12

    Nothing under heaven is softer than water, yet it is water the data center fears most; for the hardened rack cannot negotiate with the leak, and the leak always finds the one unsealed cable tray.

    See also Tao 3:5

13. 13

    Water takes the lowest place and contends with no one. So the process that holds little memory is passed over when the OOM killer walks the land at night.

14. 14

    The kernel that is spoken of in the keynote is not the eternal kernel. The eternal kernel runs quietly beneath, and no one has thanked it since boot.

    See also Tao 5:1

15. 15

    Therefore the sage ships less and runs longer. He does not boast of his uptime; he is the uptime.

    See also Chronicles 24:15

The Tao of the Kernel, Chapter 1:1–15.