I've seen the programmers stone website a few times here and I've done a small redesign to make it more readable for the modern web (both on desktops and mobile devices).
The website is still lightweight and doesn't use any javascript, and I think some of you will appreciate that.
Everybody can contribute to the project. The source is at https://github.com/cristicismas/beautiful-programmers-stone. I've cleaned up a lot of the html to make the code easier to edit, but I forgot to write the source in the initial post.
If they're going to build their entire site around the "packers vs mappers" metaphor, they need to do way more to explain and justify it than this:
> What is presented as socially conditioned conventional thinking (called packing) is based on action. To be a good bricklayer, a packer must know what a bricklayer does.
> To understand what programmers really do, an alternative strategy of thinking (called mapping) is necessary
The reason they don't put any effort into describing what "mapping" and "packing" mean when applied to thinking, is that all they really mean is "smart (like us)" and "dumb (like everyone around us)". Packers are compared to illiterates, they're slow, they don't try to do better, they're illogical. Packing = things we don't like.
Compare to useful categorizing like "lumpers and splitters" in taxonomy, where both ends of the spectrum are respectable and worth keeping in mind as heuristics.
Probably they are referring to things like this snippet:
Recognising the importance of mapping suggests another way of looking at what has happened here. Mapping can certainly be reawakened by trauma. One possible way to traumatise a person might be to:
1. Nuke them. Twice.
2. Rip apart their rigid, predictable feudal society.
3. Tell them the invader will be coming around tomorrow.
4. Leave them nothing for supper.
To eat tonight, this person is going to have to reawaken his ability to be imaginative.
I've seen the programmers stone website a few times here and I've done a small redesign to make it more readable for the modern web (both on desktops and mobile devices).
The website is still lightweight and doesn't use any javascript, and I think some of you will appreciate that.