Is there a Zen to Java programming?

Question

As a programmer/ tech writer, I�m sort of envious of luxuries available to theoretical physicists who may contemplate such mysterious and exciting things as Heiseinberg Uncertainty Principle or wave-corpuscular dualism of elementary particles. However, are physicists the only hi-tech community that is permitted to enjoy surfing the Zen paradoxes abound in the world around? Are we computer people deprived of the like delights just because computing is so deeply rooted in Aristotelian and Boolean logic? I hardly think so. Zen (one may add Tao) logic is universal, and although we so strongly tend to employ patterns of our dreary �either-or� thinking while programming artificial things, these things, quite interestingly, happen to be not exempt from the Chaotic Beauty of the Natural World. In a word, Complexity (can one question complexity of modern computing?) ever meets Chaos. And an encounter with Chaos, paradoxically, expands our understanding of Order; or rather force us into accepting a sort of Another Order that underlies seemingly chaotic processes we observe. Further, I argue my thesis.
Recently, I�ve pondered on tricks of object-oriented programming (OOP). Much was said about �more human-oriented� approaches available with OOP, which allow the programmer to enjoy a higher level of abstraction in comparison with traditional procedural methods that chain the poor developer down to a controlled flow of bits deep inside the machinery. Yes, as for me, systems design and programming in C++, Smalltalk and Java delivers more sense of �soaring above� than it does in COBOL. In other words, programming in Java appears to be a �more human� way of thinking. However, what do we understand saying �more human�? Here we need to be slightly technical. In essence of OOP lies the concept of object, which may be understood as an entity modeling a real world situation. One may announce that a Java programmer thinks in terms of real world proceedings, delivering his or her understanding of the processes by means of the quite abstracted technical language (code). As far, it sounds quite human, and it is so. And here again we can find, not surprisingly, the deep-rooted patterns of rational �either-or� logic. Object is thought of as static entity, and of course it is static in a technical sense. It possesses such qualities as state and behavior, changeable only within predefined limits. Also, object may be thought of as static because it represents a fixed (constant) set of variables (attributes) and subroutines (methods). Of course, objects provide only a degree of abstraction as to what we understand as a real world situation. However, at the same time they most definitely cannot be perceived as static entities because of dynamic nature of the computing process. In essence, computing is all about data processing, or performance of logical operations on variables stored in memory (the process was mathematically modeled well before the advent of computer as the famous Church-Turing Machine). More simply, there can be nothing static in computing at all, because computation is always a process. So, musing on the nature of objects in OOD&P, we encounter a highly sophisticated logical system presenting the following set of choices: (1) object is either static or dynamic, (2) object is both static and dynamic, (3) object is neither static nor dynamic. As we see, the two latter options sound absolutely Zen-like while the former characterizes the good old Western Aristotelian logic. This is the point where Complexity (of computing) meets Chaos, as it is thought of by Western mind-view, i. e. absence of logical consistency and determinism. It�s obvious that in OOP we cannot perceive object in other way than embracing an advanced sort of logic, so characteristic to Eastern thought. If we understand object as a real world entity, we are entitled to see it as a Zen entity either, which can be described only in the conformable logic system.
[I�ve patented it as Bojenov Uncertainty Principle in OOP.  Of course, I�d be curious to hear from fellow Zen programmers and find out their opinions on the matter, via e-mail preferably.]

Answer 1

You should spend some time around actual Physicists. You'd realize that a very small portion of Physics involves irrational, or imaginative thought. That instead a small portion of it is the imagination, and a larger portion is the execution to test the theorys produced my imagination. And this execution is MUCH less imaginative then anything. Alot of Physicists spend a great deal of their time programing at computer terminals making mathematical models of their data, most of them using far less conceptual models that are afforded to us computer programers these days.
Alot of the Physics department is bent on still using Fortran. They're having a hard time getting them to convert to using C rather then Fortran, yet alone Java or C++. And I'm certain you can agree that these languages allow alot less room for imagination then does Java. You should probably work on introducing these traits you think so highly of the Physics community as having, to the physics community. And once they've fully learned to appreciate them, then maybe you can work on expanding them to the Computer Science community as well. You should realize as well that most Physicists, are also Computer Scientists.
-Jason Thomas.