Friday. Nonsense programmer 3.0

Hi, Habr! Previously posted his strange thoughts v1.0 , v2.0 . Although, of course, this is complete nonsense, but questions are raised difficult. Thanks for the support and valuable thoughts. Today is the end of this incomprehensible story.

The connection of departments

Friday at work began with a big commotion. Designers from the design bureau moved to our floor. All the rest moved according to the principles of office leapfrog. In the next box by me passed sysadmin Ivan. In his hands he held a brand new laptop. System administrators are one of the few who can communicate normally.

- Hi Vanya, how are you?
- Here we are moving, now I will sit next to you.
- And this, what? ..
- Yes, that's it. Laptop one of the directors, with Windows 10. In the setting given. Brakes chegoy.

We looked at each other knowingly and he went to the box to connect the wires.

Windows 10, telemetry, new skype

When I started, together with everyone, to get acquainted with what we were offered under the guise of a new version of Windows, and when it became known about the so-called telemetry, I felt something like a bitter resentment.

Telemetry? Seriously? What else do you want to know about me?

Here I am - man. With original sin, as claimed by religion. With the emotions and passions described in the classics. With the evils discovered by Freud. With behavior and biochemistry, over which I have no power and who are fully studied on the example of rats and monkeys.

You know everything about me. What money I earn, what sites I visit, what films I watch, what kind of wine I drink. You know all my friends. About whom you know, everything is the same as about me.

In principle, I do not mind. I do not even mind if an encephalogram, X-ray, and tests are stolen from my hospital card. But for God's sake, use it wisely and do something good already.

Telemetry use is a big problem. The main thing, what makes a product good — the idea, architecture, implementation style, and design — cannot be derived from any statistics. Any statistics will show you only that there are more stupid people than smart ones. And it can only be used for one. To make a smart person and confidently make science-based decisions leading product to nowhere.

There was such an old Soviet cartoon. The artist painted a picture, and then his friends came to him in turn and advised how to improve it. The artist took into account all their wishes, and as a result, the picture turned into a pie. These are the erasals we see constantly in the form of software products.

If you use the majority opinion to improve the software, then soon it will turn from a scenic path in a protected forest into a messy mess trampled by millions of boots with rubbish on the roadsides.

It can be argued that a million users are not bad at all, but I am sure that no less people will eventually pass along the reserved path to the people. And most importantly - it will be people who share your values.

Taste Linux

Seeing what is happening in the world of Windows, more and more often comes the idea of ​​switching to free software. I am unfortunately not an experienced linux user. And just trying to take the first steps. But this is a very interesting feeling.

A wild variety of distros, competing window managers. Text configs where you can easily shoot yourself in the leg. Paradoxes versions. Bouquets of mysterious text utilities Unix-way. Seeing all this, you start to think: this is exactly the case about which the classic IT book “Mental Hospital in Patients' Hands” was written.

But then, if imbued with ideology and a few fundamental principles, everything is made clear. And you already want to get into this mental hospital, and separately ask to be transferred to the ward with a particularly violent.

Because practice decides everything. And practice tells us that Linux is installed on billions of devices and almost everything can work under its control - from fitness bracelets to petaflop supercomputers. How is this possible?

It seems to me that the Linux code is similar to the DNA code. Just like DNA, it is created in a tough competitive environment, subject to mutations and natural selection. As well as DNA, it can control a wide variety of living organisms — unicellular, multicellular, plants, animals — from bacteria from blue whales. And the basis, as well as the basis of life, is only one principle: to exist, to perform the task in any conditions, to accept all the challenges of the environment.

I tried Linux. Let me have a lot of problems ahead, but I liked the taste. It seemed to me that this is a taste of freedom.

Alla

My thoughts were interrupted by a phone call. I don’t really like to pick up the internal telephone. Because nothing positive from this tube can not be heard. Sometimes it seems to me that somewhere there, right next to the conversational dynamics, there is a filter that delays good news.

Gently pick up the phone.
- Michael, hello, this is Alla!
- What is Alla? Are you from HR? I have already unloaded your report. By the way, for some reason, three people have a birth date of 1809 ...
“Mikhail, you're so ... funny.” This is me Alla. From the nightclub. Do you remember?

How is this possible? For some time I keep quiet in the phone.
- Yes, raise your eyes already, look at the three boxes to the left.

I get up and see ... really Alla. I go up. Hello already in person.
- How did you find me?
- Yes, I almost immediately figured out you. Such abnormals can only work in our IT service. And I am an engineer, I work in KB. Today we moved and I just saw you.
“Maybe again at the nightclub today,” I ask carefully.
- It is possible, but better ... probably - she looks away a little - better, I guess I want to visit you ... You talked so interesting about your computer. I want to see.

I want to ask her why she disappeared then, in a nightclub, but from excitement I lose the opportunity to think.
- Well, this is ... come at six ... No at seven ... I need ... twist the legs into the stool ... This is ... address.

About the humanities and techies

Alla ... I rush home at full speed. What is being done in the head, words cannot convey ... Screw the legs to the stool ... Well, you need to freeze it like that. She probably thought that I was a complete moron. Probably had to carry it out. Suddenly she will not come?

Well, that Alla engineer. With technical people, I still feel more confident.

There is a deep abyss between the humanities and techies. They stand on both sides, waving each other's hands in greeting and throwing valuable thoughts. But in the case of a serious attempt of one or the other to cross over to the opposite side, brave souls break down into the abyss, at the bottom of which mental disorder lurks everyone.

Of course, more attempts are being made on the humanitarian side, since understanding human nature is their direct and immediate responsibility. And the bottom of the abyss is littered with mountains of madmen. Humanitarians are trying to get into the very center of the technical soul, but their arrows, poisoned by art, are at best thrust into the liver or lungs. And in the heart of the techie they do not get, because there is a special worldview, which humanists, alas, is not available.

Attempts to cross this chasm from the side of techies are a rare phenomenon, since they are mainly engaged in soldering boards for rocket complexes. But from time to time it happens that the techie in the hearts temporarily throws away the soldering iron and gives out everything he thinks about this situation. And it turns out pretty good things.

One of such works is “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. In simple life examples, the author shows a tremendous distance and irreducibility to each other of two main ways of thinking. The book does not end well. The main character decides to prove to the humanities that they are wrong, using their own methods against them. Naturally, he moves down from the coils, as I warned a little higher.

What will happen after death?

When light forms of humanitarian thought are powerless in bringing techies to culture, stronger concepts will enter the fray.

From the point of view of a modern religious thinker, the mind of a techie is poisoned by minimalism, pragmatism, functionalism. That is why atheism and nihilism in various forms flourish in it. Einstein, the great genius, tried to reverse this situation, from time to time expressing the deepest thoughts about the Universe and its Creator. But all in vain. The Theosophists, as always not understanding the true meaning, and most importantly not understanding the almost elusive irony of a man tired of debate, wrote Einstein into primitive pantheists. All the rest after that even stopped trying to change something.

Maybe programmers will be able to make progress on this hopeless issue?

After all, computer science has drawn the line between software and hardware EXACTLY THE SAME LINE, along which religion has drawn the line between body and soul. Sometimes a circuit engineer, taking a break from a routine, somehow looks especially at his desk littered with circuit diagrams and program codes. Perhaps he is trying to somehow comprehend the mystical forces that bind software and equipment into one, practically a living being.

The analogy between software and the soul is so natural, straightforward, and understandable that you can no longer say the rest. Everything that religious thought has achieved in many years is put in this scheme. This is the salvation of the soul, and rebirth, and the world mind, and nirvana.

While the humanities argue about the nature of paradise, techies, rolling up their sleeves, carefully construct the ark. And there is a high probability that the kingdom of heaven will be digital.

Evening with Alla

I am already at home and have done a titanic work, giving the apartment a look where a person can live. Soon ... Soon she will come. Some unusual bodily joy flooded over. Call The heart missed the beat.
- Hi, here I am.
- Come on in.
I went into the kitchen and took a piece of sausage from the fridge, took a loaf from the breadbasket, and a kitchen knife from the table. Put the kettle and looked into the room. Alla examined my home.

- Oh, and what is it? She asked, looking at the wall.
- This is a katana, a Japanese sword.
- This?
- No, this is a souvenir. He generally hangs here, as a symbol.
- The symbol of what?
- Symbol of problem solving ...
- What problems?
- Any ... You see, when such a thing is in hand, most of the problems simply do not exist ... I don’t know how to explain ... It needs to be felt ...

I took the sword from the wall, pulled it out of the scabbard and carefully handed it to Allah. The blade gleamed orange.
- Feel? - I asked, when Alla squeezed the handle in her hands
- I feel ...

Next to the wall was a bookcase and she looked at the books.
- How many books ... And you read them all ...
- Yes, - I nodded, - Generally, this is not a bookcase.
- Why?
- This is the plan.
- Plan?
“The battle plan, or the battle plan, or the development plan ... Call it what you will.”
Alla looked at me with caution
- I do not understand ...
- I also don’t quite understand yet ... On these shelves everything is in its place and occasionally moves from place to place, something disappears, and something appears. As I gain a deeper understanding. There is a whole system. Although you probably are not interested - I laughed.
- I am very interested ... How well you fit the books on the top shelf. Exactly in size, - Alla showed on the shelf, where there were a number of works of Lem, Strugatskikh and Efremova.
- This is not luck ... I ordered the closet just the size of the books that should be on the top shelf ... You see, the top shelf is the standard ...

- Your apartment is strange ... The sword is not a sword. A wardrobe is not a wardrobe ... Is there something ordinary?
I just spread my hands helplessly.
“Why did you leave, then ... in a nightclub.”
- It is difficult to explain ... All the girls know .... In order to properly appear in someone's life, one must first of all disappear from it ...

- And this is whose book? - she pointed to the book, expanded cover.
“This is about Norbert Wiener,” he invented cybernetics.
- And this? - Alla pointed to another book.
- This is about Turing.
- What did he come up with?
- He came up with a way to understand whether a person is a person.
- So how?
- He said that only another person can determine if a person is a person.
- I, too, opening, - Alla laughed, and I smiled too.
“And Turing discovered secret German cryptograms, which saved many thousands of lives during the war.”
- He was probably given a reward for this, or an award?
“He was castrated, and then he committed suicide ...” I said.
“Oh ... I didn’t know,” Alla said.

- You see, - I decided to share my thoughts with Alla, - I don’t know whether I am a person or not. In the fact that I have to do every day there is not a drop of human. The robot could cope with all this ... It seems to me that we are all robots ... And I don’t know how to check it ...
- But I know, - Allah said, - I, of course, are not Turing, but I also know a couple, a troika methods ... And you, in general, have a bed?
-?!?! There is! ... Only, you know ... This is not exactly a bed ...
“It’s curious to take a look at this,” Alla said.
And I was completely speechless. Therefore, the story ends here.

************ The

angel on duty at the table
Looked at the small screen,
Like a divine program
Shel man in his own way.

He walked, changed the morning, evening,
The rain hit the face and the snow fell,
And he didn’t know - he was being met by
the same person.

They will not meet? Oh, woe!
But, having pressed for a moment an evil fate,
Heaven all-seeing controller
Sent them in one stream.

And there, below, everything was simple -
Suddenly, a look met his gaze,
And everyone was incredibly pleased
With such a strange acquaintance.

And here they meet again
The moment of evening sunset
And make without return
Conditional transition to love.

She is beautiful as a princess,
He is proud and bold as a master.
Universe old processor
Two files of life merged into one.

For a moment, time stopped, A
current of enormous power
passed through Every vertebra,
And it ended up in the system.

The heavenly server so bent,
Unable to withstand the passions of the heat,
That God returned from vacation
And punished all the on-duty.

What to wish for? Love keep
On evil bad weather and thunderstorms.
Live, rejoice, love,
But - in accordance with the TK.