The Yeti\’s Cyber Smithy

Prayer found in Computer Programming

People keep telling me that I used to care about a lot more than I do since the accident as if I have in some way changed my core values. Other folk question how it is I seem to be excelling at computer programming while recovering from a brain injury. I am starting to think the two things are related. I am starting to think I have become OO Man.

OO is almost slang now a days. It means Object Oriented. I say it is slang because there is no clear definition for it. Almost any programming language can be treated as Object Oriented. Some do lend themselves better to the concept, but one can not state that any language is definitively Object Oriented. It is more of a philosophy or a discipline.

Now hard core OO programmers are probably going to take issue with my free flowing explanation, but I have never been much for absolutes. So here goes my free flowing explanation of OO programming. Those of you who remember basic might see objects in subroutine. If you have moved on to other languages you might see them in functions. If you have dabbled with what those hard core OO programmers call OO, you are probably familiar with classes. These are all spiffy words which indicate that something is a part of something else. A piece of reusable code that you do not have to write again and again for every instance of what ever it is that your main program is doing.

Well, OO is great for me because I have tremendous problems with converting temporary memory into permanent memory. OO lets me create a bunch of well document small programs which are called by the larger program. I create a system by which information is always passed from the main program to the smaller programs and then back to the main program, from there on in it’s a piece of cake. I just look back at the documentation ever five minutes and it is all right there. Lots of comment lines make it easy too.

Now I am starting to think that OO has become a way of coping with things. I remember when my therapeutic neurologist told me that there was no way to recover from my injury. That the damage was permanent and that it was his job to help me cope with it. I hated the man for what he said. Now I am starting to realize that coping isn’t all that bad. In fact, I think I am becoming a better person for it. I know my code has improved a hundred fold. So what is the secret?

The philosophy of OO is simplicity. It is not that I do not care about as many things anymore, it is that I have come to the conclusion that there are things which I simply can not change, things that there are no subroutines, functions, or classes to address beyond coming to the conclusion that it is as it is. So when I encounter such a situation, I have to make a decision. Should I spend huge volumes of time attempting to create a new piece of code or do I move on to creating something of far greater value to the master program? In some cases, the answer seems to be move on and create something of much greater value.

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference. “

From the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr