Samurai Jack - LeFreq/Singularity GitHub Wiki

From Nickelodeon's series "Samurai Jack". These statements are not canonical to the show/series.

Samurai Jack was trapped in the future until some mean wizard Apu let him go.

Few know that Samurai Jack was an elite coder, but Apu knew, and wanted him to create something with his skillz.

Samurai Jack was so good, he turned a O(n⁴) problem into a O(1) problem. The answer was simply "yes".

Translation: Four parameters to a function or command-line are as many as you'll EVER need -- with the possible exception of meta-functions, like a compiler, where the answer is five. (Two is all you might need if your language has objects.) The universe figured it out with four dimensions, your problem probably isn't more complicated. Most balkanized functions are really just a series of smaller functions which would make it all more usable.

One time, a user complained to Samurai Jack that his program was "buggy". He replied "No it isn't, you simply haven't understood the problem." He said nothing more, leaving only with "Everything can be reduced to its essence.".

Translation: The nature of data is interconnected. All data, apart from simulations, is related to the real world, so he defined a epistemology and applied everything in the world to it. Three dimensions (plus one of color) of visualization was all that it took.

Indeed, his zen was so pure, he even transformed a hardware fault into a software fix.

Translation: Sometimes you can *simulate* reality to solve a problem.

While it is said that all programs have bugs, Samurai Jack, while in a state of meditation imagined a general, integral solver for calculus, he promptly put it to code and it had 0 bugs in it. No one needed to measure it.

Translation: Bug-free code is possible, but you have to be a master.

Though he was never asked to create a data-sharing system for the planet's exabytes of data, he turned in a program consisting of interconnected objects containing the same 4 functions. Those functions took only one piece of data.

Translation: The world is still looking for the problem, but the Singularity project has the answer.

Once, Master Jack was asked "How do you refactor so mercilessly?". Samurai Jack paused for a moment and said "Every problem can be divided until there is nothing left. Much like the game of 20 questions can sort through a million possibilities. One must know which questions to ask, otherwise the game turns into 2000 questions. That is all."

Master Jack was working on some code, when a protege asked him: "What the purpose of the computer?" Samurai Jack responded "To remember ourself." "There is only one?", the student asked. "No." and stayed silent.

Master Bindu asked Samurai Jack, what is the ultimate nature of the computer? He replied, "The ultimate nature is 'difference' -- that the world can be divided until there are only two.".