[gdubs]

There’s another great book on Zen called “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. I think what Persig is getting at is “non-judgmental observation”. The ability to look at things with no ego involved, like an absolute beginner — so that you’re mind is open to the solutions that naturally present themselves.

Both of these books had a big influence on Phil Jackson — the Bulls basketball coach. His interpretation was to not “force” things — to let them unfold.

So, for coding it could be applied by not forcing solutions and instead really calmly contemplating a system until you get to a point where the next right decision reveals itself. The idea being that the solution is there, and you just have to be open to it — rather than seeing yourself as some separate entity that’s going to impose a solution on it.

[abecedarius]

https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html

> Prince Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program ran like a gentle wind.

"Excellent!" the Prince exclaimed. "Your technique is faultless!"

"Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal. "What I follow is Tao -- beyond all techniques! When I first began to program, I would see before me the whole problem in one mass. After three years, I no longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing. My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit, free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my eyes for a moment and then log off."

Prince Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"

[bloodorange]

Another legend said something similar in another field: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhvBTy28VJM

[maest]

> calmly contemplating a system until you get to a point where the next right decision reveals itself.

I think I am not getting it because that just sounds like thinking about things and designing stuff.

I mean, sometimes, I focus on getting the right primitives so that the rest of the decisions just naturally fall out from that, but I'm not sure that's what you meant.

[gdubs]

In the book he uses the example of trying to get a stripped screw out of something. It’s a classic example of where a lot of people will kind of mindlessly make the problem worse. But when you approach it calmly, maybe it leads you to realize it just needs some oil applied to it, etc.

So, I think we’ve all been there with coding where in either a rush, or driven by ego to solve the problem in some impressive way, we kind of get ourselves tied up. But when we calm our mind, it’s easier to see, “oh, I can just leverage this little change”.