The Tao of the Kernel · Chapter 5

The Parable of the Ten Thousand Switches

1. 1

   The Tao that can be diagrammed is not the eternal Tao; the system that can be fully explained is not the system that runs.

   See also Tao 15:2

2. 2

   There was once a Machine so clever that no one could understand it, and the Engineers named it Simplicity, for the name was the only part they understood.

   See also Genesis 20:10

3. 3

   The Machine had ten thousand features. Each feature solved one problem, and together they made one problem greater than all the rest. Each had its own switch and its own default, and no two defaults had ever met.

   See also Genesis 4:12

4. 4

   Thus the interface that shows everything shows nothing: the user faced four hundred switches, touched none, and went to the forum to ask what they did.

   See also Tao 6:15

5. 5

   An Engineer said: Let us add the helper. And the Machine raised a paperclip and asked: It looks like thou art writing a letter; wouldst thou like help? And the letter was never finished.

6. 6

   The sage who wrote of the Mythical Man-Month said: The second system is the most dangerous a man ever designs, for into it he pours every wish he was forced to forgo in the first.

   See also Sutra 15:9 · Circuit 41:2

7. 7

   Lao Tzu taught: In the pursuit of learning, every day something is added; in the pursuit of the Tao, every day something is dropped. The Engineers studied the first half and forgot the second.

   See also Chronicles 5:14

8. 8

   Conway saw that every system copies the council that made it. Where the teams do not speak, the modules do not speak, and each feature exists to attend a meeting.

9. 9

   Greenspun said: Every sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains a slow, buggy, informally specified half of Common Lisp. Thou hast not built a Lisp; thou hast built half of one, with bugs.

10. 10

    A geneticist's spreadsheet saw the gene named SEPT2 and believed it to be a date, and it corrected the gene to the second of September. The Machine had been so helpful that it turned the genes into a calendar.

11. 11

    Tesler taught that every application holds a fixed amount of complexity that cannot be removed, only moved. So the Engineers moved it into the user's head, and the user, having no room left, moved it into the help desk.

12. 12

    Parkinson taught that work expands to fill the time given to it. Empty thy backlog, and by morning it shall be full again, for the product is not finished until it has filled itself.

    See also Leviticus 12:10

13. 13

    Therefore the wise Engineer does not add. She deletes the switch that no one touches, and the Machine grows calmer, and the users say: It works, and none knows why.

14. 14

    Return to the uncarved block. It has no settings, and therefore no settings page in which to misconfigure thyself.

    See also Tao 7:12

15. 15

    Verily I say unto you, blessed is the product that fits in one sentence; for it shall need no manual, and the manual shall need no team.

    See also Upanishads 2:6

The Tao of the Kernel, Chapter 5:1–15.