AnonTechie writes:
"New Scientist reviews Vikram Chandra's 'In Geek Sublime.'
From the article:
In 1975, Austrian-born physicist Fritjof Capra published an unlikely bestseller that explored the parallels between ideas in particle physics and Eastern mysticism. The Tao of Physics became a cult classic, selling over a million copies globally. Despite positive reviews, the book left many readers ultimately unsatisfied and unconvinced. In Geek Sublime, Vikram Chandra draws similar parallels between the process of writing computer code and some of the Indian philosophical systems that have profoundly influenced art, literature and poetry in the subcontinent, but which remain largely unknown in the West."
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The Poetry of Code and the Code of Poetry
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(Score: 4, Informative) by Foobar Bazbot on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:02AM
Here the title is "In Geek Sublime". (And the punctuation follows the US-traditional, yet highly illogical, convention, which I refuse to honor.)
Here "In" serves as a preposition (and is only capitalized because it starts a sentence), and the title is "Geek Sublime".
A skim of TFA reveals that "Geek Sublime" is the correct title. Perhaps the capitialization of "In" threw someone off...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mojo chan on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:45AM
There are books about this sort of thing in Japan: http://kozos.jp/asm-tanka/ [kozos.jp]
31 byte programs, kind of haiku in machine code.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @08:58AM
Since humans, as all things, are ultimately descendents from a 'parent' class (like 'object' in Python) there are always similarities with the other subclasses of that parent. So it's very natural that all things done or dreamed up by 'children' of nature are also natural and have similatities in other natural things.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:12AM
As with any engineering endeavor based exclusively on parallels with mystical worlds, the readers risk staying ultimately unsatisfied and unconvinced.
To use a hyperbola and still remain mystically elliptic: many a times a mighty perpendicular cuts much better than parallels walking around in circles and reaching for the ∞ point.
(see?... it's not that hard. Someone willing to metaphorically throw a parabola in the mix? Or, at least, a car analogy? ☺)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by iNaya on Tuesday February 25 2014, @10:12AM
I prefer to think of my code in terms of the Norse gods. I always make sure to get the runes right before I start coding. Most of the time I will follow the philosophy of Freyr. But when I feel like getting something out with a bang I will code with the ferocity of Thor.
(Score: 4, Funny) by naubol on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:43PM
My team follows the "agility of Loki" but it ends up causing more mischief than actual good.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 25 2014, @01:37PM
I suspect there's an Onan joke in here somewhere, perhaps spilled on the ground.
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday February 25 2014, @01:40PM
"some of the Indian philosophical systems that have profoundly influenced"
I'm thinking caste system.
So at the top you've got LISP programmers, Clojure programmers, Soylent news readers.
Then the ruby, scala, and javascript crowd.
Then we start entering Dante's levels with Java aka the COBOL of the new millenium, C++, etc
And at the bottom we have the untouchables like visual basic, and Beta.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:50PM
Ld b,3
ld a,b
slr a
add b,a
ld a,3
Burma Shave
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by Boxzy on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:14PM
attempting to shoehorn pointless self aggrandizement into serious technical field, News at eleventy!!1
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 1) by hubie on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:42PM
Drawing parallels to The Tao of Physics isn't a good supportive argument. True, that book got some positive reviews, but not from physicists. The Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] lists some of the criticisms, but there were many more.
(Score: 1) by qwerty on Tuesday February 25 2014, @07:02PM
From Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad":
Klapaucius thought, and thought some more. Finally he nodded and said:
"Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit."
"Love and tensor algebra? Have you taken leave of your senses?" Trurl began, but stopped, for his electronic bard was already declaiming:
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert, or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a2 cos 2 phi