The Codeless Code: Case 74 Bathwater 
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 After several days spent shovelling snow, the nuns Yíwen
and Hwídah succumbed to the bitter cold and were given leave
to recuperate in the hot baths. A blindfolded young monk was
sent there to find them.

“Master Yishi-Shing says that he has swum deep through your
ocean of log files and discovered a pearl,” said the monk.
He waved a printout in the general direction of the
splashing until it was taken from his hand.

“These are stack traces for NullPointerExceptions,” sniffled
Yíwen. “All were thrown during our long-running data
processing job.”

“Most likely the problem is bad data,” said Hwídah, her
voice muffled by the hot towel she had draped over her face
to clear her sinuses.

“Many pardons,” said Yíwen to the monk. “But I cannot tell
what records were being processed. Where are the info
messages that we log to provide context?”

“They are no longer output,” said the monk. “The flood of
spurious warnings and errors was causing the log files to
grow too quickly. Something had to be done to prevent them
from filling up the disk. So Yishi-Shing decreed that debug
and info messages, being non-critical, should be
suppressed.”

Yíwen sighed, thrust the printout into the arms of the
sightless monk, and slipped back into the bathwater.
“Yishi-Shing rakes the seabed for pearls only. He throws out
every oyster unopened because their shells are ugly and his
raft is small.”

“He has forgotten the very purpose of fishermen,” said
Hwídah from under her towel. ‘Now, bedecked in orphan
pearls, we will starve for want of oyster-meat.”

* “Stealthy Wombat” offers this poem:

Yíwen and Hwídah sift the yard for Yishi-Shing’s pearl

In spring, he loses it again

Ahab searched the seas for the white whale

The whale was white, but oh! So broad the ocean!