Hacker koan facts for kids

A hacker koan is a funny and short story about computer science. Hackers, especially those who worked on artificial intelligence (AI) at MIT (a famous university), came up with the idea and the name. A special book called the Jargon File has many of these stories, which are often called AI Koans.

Most hacker koans are not exactly like the kōans found in Zen Buddhism (a type of old Japanese wisdom). However, both kinds of koans are short, mysterious, and often have a hidden meaning or a sudden lesson.

Examples

The Uncarved Block

In the days when Sussman was a new student, Minsky came to him as he was working on the PDP-6 computer.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a computer program that learns, set up in a random way, to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied.

"Why is the program set up randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any ideas already in its 'mind' about how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman understood something important.

Like Zen koans, this story might have a real and correct answer. In the story, the room is not truly empty when Minsky shuts his eyes. Also, the computer program might still have ideas, even if it was set up randomly. These ideas are random instead of from a human, but they are still there.

This story might come from a real event described in the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (chapter 6):

So Sussman began working on a program. Not long after, this odd-looking bald guy came over. Sussman figured the guy was going to boot him out, but instead the man sat down, asking, "Hey, what are you doing?" Sussman talked over his program with the man, Marvin Minsky. At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions. Minsky said, "Well, it has them, it's just that you don't know what they are." It was the most profound thing Gerry Sussman had ever heard. And Minsky continued, telling him that the world is built a certain way, and the most important thing we can do with the world is avoid randomness, and figure out ways by which things can be planned. Wisdom like this has its effect on seventeen-year-old freshmen, and from then on Sussman was hooked.

Victory

A student was playing a handheld video game during a class.

The teacher called on the student and asked him what he was doing. The student replied that he was trying to master the game.

The teacher said, "There is a way that you will not try to master the game, and the game will not try to master you."

The student asked, "What is this way?"

The teacher said, "Give me your video game, and I will show you."

The student gave him the game, and the teacher threw it to the ground, breaking it into pieces. The student understood something important.

A story similar to this one can be found in The Tao of Programming.

Enlightenment

Tom Knight might have written this story. He helped create the Lisp machine at MIT:

A new student was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke seriously: "You cannot fix a machine by just turning it off and on with no understanding of what is going wrong."

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

This story means that sometimes a simple idea can be the right idea, even if it seems too easy.

Emacs and Bolio

This koan is sometimes called an "ice cream koan." The word "koan" sounds like "cone" in "ice cream cone," so it's a pun (a play on words). There is another "ice cream koan" in the book The Dharma Bums. This koan talks about computer lab tools from before the GNU project (a big project that creates free computer software):

A confident new student once said to Stallman: “I can guess why the editor is called Emacs, but why is the program that makes text look neat called Bolio?”

Stallman replied strongly: “Names are just names. ‘Emack & Bolio's’ is the name of a popular ice cream shop in Boston. Neither of these men had anything to do with the software.”

His question was answered, yet still unanswered. The student turned to go, but Stallman called to him: “Neither Emack nor Bolio had anything to do with the ice cream shop, either.”

(The store is named after two people without homes.)

Books of Koans

Eric S. Raymond, a computer expert, put the first AI Koans in a book called the Hacker's Jargon Dictionary. He says that Danny Hillis, another computer expert, created them when he was a student at MIT.

The Codeless Code is a different book about software engineers who work at large companies, instead of Unix hackers. The stories in it are like traditional Zen koans. Every character is imaginary, and most are masters and monks in a place like the Far East. The stories talk about things like making software. The name comes from an old book called The Gateless Gate.

See also

In Spanish: Jargon File para niños