One possible interpretation: Things that are valuable (be it artistic creations or useful tools) will overshadow their inventors. If you want your work to be recognized, then you should care more about your work than about being recognized for it.
>Things that are valuable (be it artistic creations or useful tools) will overshadow their inventors. //
Almost all the artistic works that I can recognise on sight I have an idea who the artist was/is. Often you can see a work for the first time and have a guess at the artist. I don't think it works really - maybe for certain areas and/or with historic pieces (like who carved the Lewis Chessmen?)?
4 states: bad work+not recognised, bw+r, good work+nr, gw+r. you cannot control recognition. pointless to aim for bad work. always aim for good work and let recognition happen or not. ideally, be happy with doing good work and indifferent to recognition.
i think it was one of th US' ex-presidents who said "it's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't mind who gets the credit"
having said that, it takes a special person to do good work and see someelse get the credit and still be indifferent...
People recognising your work is distinct from people recognising you. It's sufficient for people to know your work and like it. Why should they care who made it?
It's an example in cultural differences. We can infer from the structure of the story, that it takes place in Japan. There, masters of great works aren't recorded and only the works remain - a clear consequence of day-to-day Japanese humbleness. Contrast that with the western world, where names like Leonardo and Michelangelo are clearly recognized for their work and we even remember people from something like 2000 years ago, like Plato, Socrates, Pliny, etc. The point of the story then is that if you want to be recognized for your work, move to Europe. Or if you're already in Europe, don't move to Japan.
I have to say that I like this koan quite a bit more than the original programmer koans, which have always struck me as disappointingly shallow and rather more like knock-knock jokes.
Real koans often have a joke-like quality to them as well – both jokes and koans tend to entail a sudden shift of perspective – but the original programmer koans have no element of enlightenment.
the point of art (code) should not be for recognition. create for the sake of taking the journey of creation, its much more fulfilling, and let others enjoy or not the creation. many famous artists were dead long before they were recognized for their brilliance.
20,000,000 people used our software last year. Perhaps 100 of them know who we are. I find this oddly gratifying, in some variety of Wizard-of-Oz type fashion.
21 comments
[ 76.1 ms ] story [ 243 ms ] threadAlmost all the artistic works that I can recognise on sight I have an idea who the artist was/is. Often you can see a work for the first time and have a guess at the artist. I don't think it works really - maybe for certain areas and/or with historic pieces (like who carved the Lewis Chessmen?)?
i think it was one of th US' ex-presidents who said "it's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't mind who gets the credit"
having said that, it takes a special person to do good work and see someelse get the credit and still be indifferent...
It's also a joke.
One revision history later... "oh good god, it was me".
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan