A certain monk was reported to be unwilling to leave his
terminal. For two days he had gone without food or sleep.
When the Java master investigated, he found the monk visibly
shaken. On screen was the following code, which at that
moment was running under the debugger:
while (true) { /* do nothing */ }
“I have asserted that the loop must execute while truth
itself is true,” said the monk. “Yet if I hit the Interrupt
key, the loop will terminate. The implication is that, in
that precise moment, truth will no longer be true. How can
any of us dare to disturb the program? We might bring chaos
upon the world!”
The Java master reached down and pulled the plug out of the
wall. The screen went black.
“Now the loop can never be interrupted,” said the master.
