I'm reminded of a post called <i>Music and Lyrics in Math Talks</i> (<a href="https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion78.html" rel="nofollow">https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion78.html</a>) by the mathematician Doron Zeilberger:<p>> <i>Human beings have bodies and souls. Computers have hardware and software, and math talks have lyrics and music. Most math talks have very hard-to-follow lyrics, […]</i><p>> <i>But like a good song, and a good opera, you can still enjoy it if the music is good. The “music” in a math talk is the speaker’s enthusiasm, body-language, and off-the-cuff heuristic explanations.</i><p>> <i>Sometimes you can recognize a familiar word, and relate it to something of your own experience, whether or not the meaning that you attribute to it is what the speaker meant, and this can also enhance your enjoyment.</i><p>I think of this often (e.g. <a href="https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/music-and-lyrics/" rel="nofollow">https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/music-and-lyrics...</a>). This post here is a wonderful example. Although the <i>lyrics</i> here are beyond my understanding:<p>> <i>I decided that the best way out, was to carefully pull the warps that ended up in front of the reed, since they were only 1 1/2 yards, and resleying them where required (because this was a differential sett warp, there were dents where there were as many as five ends) and then carefully tying them back into the slippery rayon warps that went through the heddles, one by one.</i><p>the whole post is clearly pulsing with the kind of <i>music</i> that speaks to a programmer's soul. I remember one of our CS textbooks, in the chapter running through some history, had half a page on Jacquard's loom (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jacquard_machine&oldid=989697711" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jacquard_machine&...</a> ); evidently the similarity in spirit between programming and weaving runs deep. This is most evident in some paragraphs:<p>> <i>I sort of think that it has to do with creating calm in chaos. There is so little in the world that we have any control over. But what happens at our looms, that thing, we have control over. And if what happens on our looms becomes total chaos, then patience, tenacity, and time will make it work. That’s why I did it.</i><p>> <i>[…] I did it because there is something intensely satisfying about bringing order to chaos. There is something intense about saving a project. I had my doubts that this was even weaveable […] I grabbed my 5X glasses, a magnifying OTT lite, and a sley hook and started in. 10 hours later I was triumphant.</i><p>…but really, one can sense this throughout the entire post. I'm glad I read it.