To prevent any further proliferations of redundant code,
the abbot of the Elephant's Footprint Clan decreed that his
monks were only to produce code which was
application-specific. Anything of a more general nature had
to be proposed to a Software Reuse Subcommittee, which
researched open source solutions, weighed the merits of the
proposal against the needs of the various applications,
amended the design as its members saw fit, and (if all signs
were favorable) put the project on the implementation
schedule. The whole process, from inception to execution,
took many weeks.
When news of this policy reached him, the Java master sent
for the abbot’s two prized songbirds. His letter promised
that the birds would be returned the following week. And so
they were, in two separate bamboo cages of the Java master’s
devising.
The bars of the first cage were a handspan apart; the bird
had easily escaped during the journey.
The bars of the second cage were so close that neither light
nor air could pass through. The bird inside was dead upon
arrival.
Tied to each cage was a poem in the master’s hand:
