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Confucian Software
This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-08-12
Confucius never touched a computer, but he knew quite a lot about software. He has much to say about problems of knowledge and information, as well as right action under ambiguity, threats and constraints. Read as a set of commentaries on The Analects, these essays treat Confucius as an early theorist of the flow of information through rites, names and rules; the cyborg sage tangled in the half-built machine of the feudal state.
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Eight essays reading the Analects as a text about information and control, alongside modern software practice. It discusses naming and refactoring, reuse and legacy code, protocol design, and bureaucracy both human and machine. Not a work of history; but reflections on craft and theory from a working software engineer. Essays are organised around verses, with the Chinese text and English translation of each verse included.
This book collects a series of blog posts from conflatedautomatons, cleaned up and in a convenient ebook format.
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