"Curse these personal computers!" cried the novice in anger, "To make them do
anything I must use three or even four editing programs. This is truly
intolerable!"
The master programmer stared at the novice. "And what would you do to remedy
this state of affairs?" he asked.
The novice thought for a moment. "I will design a new editing program," he
said, "a program that will replace all these others."
Suddenly the master struck the novice on the side of his head.
"What did you do that for?" exclaimed the surprised novice.
"I have no wish to learn another editing program," said the master.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- The Zen of Programming
A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial
package.
The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master
reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set
of generalized graphics routines, and artificial intelligence interface,
but not the slightest mention of anything financial....
