in reply to Papal infallibility

One generally doesn't play with these things. Sloth is a deadly sin according to, at least, one major religion - possibly more. One may well find themselves with feet cemented in a purgatory somewhere.

There is a pile of logs outside I need to chop. Instead I am trying to think how to build a log-chopper. That keeps me up at night. It's hard work. But eventually I go to sleep with the happy thought that one day I will find the way to avoid menial, repetitive and strainfull work. In the morning I check if I woke up with cemented feet. Not yet. But I realise I walk on a tight rope. Plus I am cold.

My bashrc is full of aliases. My ~/bin stuffed with one-liners. As soon as I have achieved something interesting I pack it into a module. I can't bear the thought of typing an extra iota when I don't have to because I can code it. Often spending more time at that than typing that iota 10000 times.

Once I heard a life-"scientist" at lunch mentioning that his staff were busy counting cells in microscope images all day long. I was not lazy to dispense the most lazy advice: "I may be able to automate that menial, repetitive, brain-injuring cell counting. And improve accuracy too.", "Me?" He said. "That's what they are being paid for, let them do some work."

Independently of religious status, Augustine of Hippo has something to say for those monks who "were begging in public places, refusing to work, and were untidy in appearance."

bw, bliako

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Re^2: Papal infallibility
by jszinger (Scribe) on Jan 26, 2021 at 18:14 UTC
    Sloth is a deadly sin according to, at least, one major religion - possibly more.

    Pride is another deadly sin, and patience is widely recognized as a virtue.

    The beauty of this is that Larry takes what are generally considered negative traits and describes the positive potential of each. He also make the distinction from from fasle laziness, false mpatience, and false hubris, but I can't find a good reference.

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      > ..and false hubris, but I can't find a good reference.

      The Camel book?

      see also

      L*

      There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
      Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.
[reply]
[d/l]

      Your comment lead me to realise that the programming world is like a mirror-image of the real world. In the sense that a lot of conventions here are opposite. Laziness and all. Not a big fan, but Alice in wonderland comes to mind. Also the mob-world where a "good killer" is prided!

      Other people also realised that general upside-down of conventions in programming (ethic? work-ethic?) much earlier. For example, Joseph Weizenbaum (himself a computer programmer, created ELIZA):

      ... bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with
sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles,
their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised
to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems
to be riveted as a gambler’s on the rolling dice. When not so
transfixed, they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts
over which they pore like possessed students of a cabbalistic
text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours
at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them:
coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near
the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and
unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are
oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move.
These are computer bums, compulsive programmers ...

      And to take it a bit further, I will not claim that "information and access should be free" were invented by (the first) computer programmers, of which most of them were hacking at MIT around a PDP-?, but definetely the motto and what it entails became a huge part of their ethic and actions (re: lock-picking and MIT, see also "Hackers" by Steven Levy). For the beginning, at least. Ending IMO at the turn of the millenium when Capitalism conquered the programming world: the dot.com and the floatation.

      A (personal) observation: Perl as an interpreted (vs compiled) language greatly adds to code-sharing, even if licensing can range. Frequently the question pops up here and elsewhere (and by myself too), how can I protect my Perl program? And the answer is: you can't :)

      bw, bliako

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