The Codeless Code: Case 52 Buckets 
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 After breakfast, a novice of the Spider Clan noticed a line
of six monks leaving the temple with bucket-yokes on their
shoulders and grim expressions on their faces. A junior
abbot followed close behind. The monks trudged down an
overgrown stony path that wound down the hillside,
disappearing into a thicket of pines.

This same novice observed the monks clambering back up to
the temple after lunch. Their buckets were now packed full
of moist earth and stones, yet despite the heavy load every
brother was laughing and had a spring in his step.

So it went the following day, and the day after, and the day
after that, piquing the curiosity of the novice. All six
monks bore the red waist-cloths of the Laughing Monkey Clan,
so the novice went to that clan’s hall. The abbot was seated
on the floor of the common room, preoccupied with balancing
an egg on its point.

“What of the six monks, and the buckets of earth?” asked the
novice.

“They are being corrected,” said the abbot, “for their
perilous mismanagement of a critical software module.” He
reached into a small bag of salt, put a pinch on the floor,
set the egg on top, and gently blew the salt away from the
egg. The egg toppled. The abbot sighed, took another pinch
of salt and began again.

“What flaw did they introduce?” asked the novice.

“Mu,” said the abbot. “They introduced no flaw. Not a line
of code has been touched in many months.”

“Then what flaw did they fail to correct?”

“Mu,” repeated the abbot as the egg toppled again. “The
module functions perfectly, and doubtless will continue to
do so for many months more.”

The novice frowned. “I do not see how something which is
flawless and unchanging can be objectionable, or its
management called perilous.”

“You, monk!” shouted a voice behind him. The novice turned
to find Java master Banzen glaring at him.

“Tomorrow, you join the line,” said Banzen.

“The punishment is simple,” said the junior abbot as the
novice took up the yoke. “I’ll explain when we get to the
hollow.”

The novice followed the six brothers down the stony path,
with the junior abbot bringing up the rear behind him. They
proceeded through the deep forest in silence.

Eventually they came to a broad bright sunlit clearing. In
the center a giant spire of rock thrust upward toward the
heavens: it rose a full four storeys high, and was so wide
that if twenty men stood fingertip to fingertip they could
barely encircle it.

“Is it not grand?” said the abbot. “It has stood since the
beginning of time.”

Approaching, the novice could see that the clearing had been
dug away all around the spire, so that it was surrounded on
all sides by a great empty moat. Peeking above the moat’s
edge was the top rung of a bamboo ladder. Each monk
disappeared down the ladder in turn, re-emerging a long time
later drenched in sweat, with a full yoke and a broad smile.

Finally it was the novice’s turn.

The moat was several storeys deep. As the novice climbed
rung by rung down into the shadows he could see that the
earth had been removed not just from around the spire, but
from under its base as well. The entire massive boulder was
now balanced precariously on a few yards of packed earth.

“Crawl under the spire,” the abbot shouted down, “until you
reach the mound of dirt below the center. Fill your buckets
from there. And if I were you, I’d work slowly and try not
to sneeze.”