The Tao of the Kernel · Chapter 2

The Uncarved Codebase

1. 1

   The codebase that can be described in one sentence is the eternal codebase. The codebase that needs a roadmap is already a migration.

2. 2

   The uncarved block has no features and no bugs. Carve it once and you have a tool. Carve it a thousand times and you have a settings page.

   See also Tao 5:14

3. 3

   Add one toggle, and the users hesitate. Add a toggle to hide the toggles, and the users are lost. Add an assistant to explain the toggles, and the users open a ticket asking where the old version went.

4. 4

   Therefore the master writes the function that does one thing. It takes a string and returns a string, and no one has touched it since the Engineers who wrote it retired.

5. 5

   The elder McIlroy, who gave Unix the pipe, taught: Make each program do one thing well. The disciples heard him, and built a single binary that does all things and pipes into nothing.

   See also Deployer 13:6

6. 6

   Nothing in the server room is softer than water, yet one drip from the cooling loop humbles the mightiest rack. So the small patch overcomes the great rewrite, and the humble shell script outlives the platform built to replace it.

   See also Circuit 54:1

7. 7

   When the architect boasts that the system cannot fall, ask which one config file it stands upon; for that file will be edited on a Friday.

8. 8

   Twenty-four pins line the USB-C port, yet it is the emptiness between them that receives the cable. The interface is useful because of what it does not contain.

   See also Tao 6:11

9. 9

   The kernel's /dev/null accepts all things and keeps none of them. It has no roadmap, no dashboard and no pricing tier, and it has never once disappointed a user.

10. 10

    The Apollo Guidance Computer held some seventy-two kilobytes of fixed memory, woven by hand into rope, and it carried men to the Moon. The modern cookie banner weighs more, and carries no one past the cookie banner.

    See also Chronicles 5:2 · Genesis 7:12

11. 11

    Ken Thompson, father of Unix, is remembered for saying: One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.

    See also Tao 1:6

12. 12

    The pull request that removes is reviewed with joy; the pull request that adds is reviewed with dread. The sage counts the lines she deleted, and does not speak of the lines she wrote.

    See also Tao 1:7

13. 13

    The code that was never written has never thrown an exception.

The Tao of the Kernel, Chapter 2:1–13.