What a great series! I was at a book store and saw Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance after your first post, must have read it (the first time) in one day. Thank you for the perfect introduction and memorial to a great thinker.

Art is high-quality endeavor. Quality and its manifestations are in their nature, the same. -Pirsig

It's funny in an amazing way, how kiddos learn to speak. I think the profit motive! Sure, they love you, but you are the food source also, the ride to the park, the partitioner of youtube. And they are the continuation of your DNA, the biological imperative. One does not profit at the expense of the other. Automation is going to be a big win for the VAST majority. Socrates next door neighbors could not even begin to consider his wisdom faster than I can with Amazon. Is this not the epitomic manifestation of quality?

There is a great quote in almost every page of Zen. OK one more.

In time you will come to see that the screw is less and less an object typical of a class and more an object unique in itself. You will begin to see the screw not as an object at all but as a collection of functions

What is THIS object doing that is important?

What are the collection of functions (class properties, methods) that these objects provide?

Or I could see "collection of functions" being an abstract base class, the most generic idea, like 'Joins two things together'

"Some programs are elegant, some are exquisite, some are sparkling." - Knuth

In Knuth's list of the good:

• It's especially good to have a program that works correctly.
• It is often good to have a program that won't be hard to change, when the time for adaptation arises.
• Interacts gracefully with its users
• Recover from human errors in the input data.
• Meaningful error messages, flexible input formats
• Efficiency with which the computer's resources are being used

Knuth also points out that artificial restrictions help develop skill. Perl one liners!

I believe the deepness reacheable by human thoughts has not improved over centuries.

I can't tell if you mean, all the centuries since the Roman Empire, or it takes a century or two to improve. Olympic records are broken after a while, when some greater athlete comes along. The mind likewise: Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, those two guys that invented Calculus at the same time. Even if you are right, it's no big deal. Plenty to consider already! And you keep adding to it!

There are so many great ideas in your post.. Language is really not equipped. Maybe just English, I don't know. Art + Science, there should be one word to combine both ideas. You are exactly right, when you say one or the other, there is an image that forms in your mind that almost precludes the correct idea from forming. Your initial thought, more like a culturally based reaction, leads you in the wrong direction.

But when you are applying yourself fully, trying to convince the machine to do what you want, combining your reasoning and your current understanding of the machine, reaching deep for the grammar that you have available, the rhetoric is firing off in your brain, you are trying to convince yourself what the right structure to put into the machine is. You know the payoff, the pride of Quality, the good, the accomplishment will come, eventually all the pieces finally fit into place, and you get that 'well done' pride of accomplishment -- Is truly great! Thanks++