Scott Hanselman

The Zen of .NET

August 12, 2004 Comment on this post [2] Posted in Programming
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I just saw Joe Bork's Zen Post today which reminded me of the .NET Zen Koans that I did a little over a year ago.  I thought I'd re-post a few of them.  I have a looping PPT of these with pictures that I use to start my talks. 


 Managed Zen Koan
"One day as Sam was writing Managed C++, the Buddha called to him, "Sam, Sam, why do you not enter the runtime and write in C#?" Sam replied, "I do not see myself as outside. Why enter?"


Unsafe Zen Koan
"Scott showed out his unsafe code and said, "If you call this unsafe code, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it unsafe code, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"


 Languages Zen Koan
"One day Fred was working with .NET. He overheard a programmer say to his superior, "Give me the best programming language you have." "Every language in .NET is the best," replied the butcher. "You can not find any language in .NET that is not the best." At these words, Fred was enlightened. "


MSDN Zen Koan
One minute of sitting,
one inch of Buddha,
one line of code.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Now look it up on MSDN. 


.NET Framework Zen Koan
 However deep your
knowledge of the .NET Framework,
it is no more
than a strand of hair in the vastness of space.
However important seeming your object model,
it is but a drop of water in a deep ravine.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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August 13, 2004 2:20
I loved koans when I was younger - about the time I went through my "Godel Escher Bach" phase. Can I try?

Scott needed a dev lead for his team, so he called all his programmers together and showed them a delegate saying:
"Without calling it a delegate, tell me what is is"
His current dev lead replied "You couldn't call it an array"
The cook walked up, invoked the delegate and walked away. The cook was put in charge of the dev team.


August 14, 2004 1:50
That's pretty good. :)
Reminds me of the Tao of Programming.

Here's a couple (not .NET specific) that I wrote a while back (got a few more, but I like these ones best):

'Compare a the programmer to water heating:
- The novice is ice; he is frozen in his bits and bytes on the way to the solution.
- The good programmer is water; he flows through all problems.
- The master programmer is mere fumes; problems flow through him.'

'A novice once told a master programer that he is sick of writing documentation.
The master programmer replied:
"The programmer should not write documentation."
The novice was happy and started walking away, grinning, when the master programmer grabbed his arm and said:
"In the hands of the master programmer, documentation writes itself."'

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.