Java master Bawan and a young monk in his charge were
walking down a road, when they came upon an emissary of the
Emperor.
After the usual greetings were exchanged, the emissary
turned to Bawan and with disdain asked, “Why does your monk
not groom himself according to the imperial edicts of
professional attire? His face is unshaven, his footwear
unforgiveably gaudy, and his robes are made of cheap cotton
with a humorous slogan adorning the back. This is
disrespectful to you in the extreme! Why do you tolerate
it?”
In a haughty voice, Bawan replied, “This is not some lowly
bead-pusher employed by a counting house, nor some tenth
rank scribe in the Grand Bureaucracy! This is a monk of the
Temple of the Morning Brass Gong, who practices the glorious
arts of Java, C, and PHP; of Python and Perl; Bourne shell
and Korn shell; SQL, JPL, XML, CSS3 and Javascript too. He
can—with the merest flickering of his fingers on a
keyboard—summon entire websites into existence, wherein
horses and armor befitting the Emperor’s most august
regiments may be purchased with two-day shipping guaranteed.
He has demonstrated proficiency in both debugging and
re-bugging: the yin and yang around which all blessed
commerce revolves! He and his fellows cannot and will not be
held to our generation’s trivial ideals of personal hygiene.
The monks of his Temple are a breed apart!”
Thus chastened, the emissary bowed coldly and continued on
his way.
When the fellow was out of earshot, the young monk smirked
at Bawan, saying, “That emissary was most assuredly an
idiot, to need such things explained to him in this day and
age.”
Bawan cast an eye over the monk’s stubbled cheek and
irreverent garments. Without warning the master swung his
staff hard into the back of the monk’s skull, killing him on
the spot.
“I, too, am a breed apart,” said Bawan thoughtfully.
