The Codeless Code: Case 219 Nothing Really Matters
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The Temple used a popular dependency-injection and
transaction-management framework, yet always there were
junior monks who needed to be schooled in its ways. One such
junior monk had been tasked with creating a Service
interface and its implementation class. The senior monk
Wangohan was reviewing his code.
“You have placed a @Transactional annotation on a private
method!” snapped Wangohan. “That will do nothing! The
framework only looks for such annotations on the
implementations of public interface methods!”
The junior monk replied calmly: “I observed no error.”
“Your class also has a non-transactional method call a
transactional one directly!” continued Wangohan. “That too
will do nothing! Transaction management is only performed by
the implementation’s proxy, not the implementation itself!”
Again the junior monk replied calmly: “I observed no error.”
Wangohan went to see master Kaimu and told him what had
transpired. “How can I work with such an idiot?” asked
Wangohan. “He only believes there is an error if it leaps up
and bites his eyeball.”
“Null,” said Kaimu. “The junior monk is no idiot. For what
he said is true, and yet he means the opposite of what he
said, which is also true. So he is twice correct, and
concisely so.”
“Then master Kaimu must be two times too clever for me,”
replied Wangohan. “For he clearly just said something, but
what he said was nonsense, which is the opposite of saying
something. Therefore let me depart before I become so wise
that I surpass the junior monk.”
Wangohan bowed mockingly and went out.
Later that day, Kaimu found the junior monk and said to him,
“There is a smoke alarm in Wangohan’s quarters. Disable it.
Then tonight when he is sleeping, set his room on fire.”
“Surely Wangohan would find this objectionable,” said the
junior monk.
