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My koans! A kōan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement from Chinese Chan Buddhist lore, supplemented with commentaries, that is used in Zen Buddhist practice in different ways. The main goal is to achieve kenshō, to see or observe one’s buddha-nature
Here I’ve collected “programmer koans” I’ve shared online in various places. I’ve started occasionally replying to people on social-media like sites with ChatGPT/Claude/ollama generated programmer koans for some peoples questions or doubts. Some of the generated creations I’ve revised myself, others I have left as they were. So far, people tend to like these answers
Divine Intellect
A novice said:
Auth really isn’t hard. With email and password, you salt and hash. With OAuth, you use a library.
The master replied:
Unless you have divine intellect.
The novice laughed:
I have been blessed with divine intellect.
The master nodded:
Then you may roll your own crypto.
The novice asked:
And when I am finished?
The master said:
Then you will know why we use the library.
The Router and the Room
The apprentice asked
Is it in the grace framework?
The skeptic asked
Why are you blacklisting?
The defender replied
I blacklist nothing. I defend the right to speak—and the right to have a quiet room.
The master configured no blacklist. Instead, she drew boundaries: topics as rooms, rooms with doors, doors with keys. Packets flowed freely on the backbone; capability tokens decided which rooms they could enter. Nothing was silenced; not everything was everywhere.
When the network was calm, the apprentice said
So freedom is the open wire.
The master smiled
And dignity is the well-scoped ACL.
Meditation: If you refuse to blacklist, but communities still feel safe, what did you architect—censorship, or capability?
The Scribbles of the Unknowing Coder
The novice said
I code, but I do not know what I am doing. The lines appear before me, yet their meaning is lost. Is this effort wasted?
The master replied
When the child scribbles, is the page ruined? Or has the hand begun to learn the shape of letters? When a traveler sets foot upon the path, does he already know the mountain’s peak? Or does the mountain reveal itself only to the one who keeps walking? In the emptiness of not-knowing, the seed of knowing takes root. What is done without understanding becomes the ground from which understanding grows.
to be continued…