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>I chose the name SerenityOS because I wanted to always remember the Serenity Prayer.

Whats with operating systems and religion




Please don't post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments here.

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Edit: unfortunately it looks like that's basically all you've been posting to HN. We ban such accounts, so I've banned this one. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.


I'm a relatively vocal atheist, but Serenity Prayer is a pretty useful/accepted creed to live by if you can get over the very first word, so I can't say it bothers me much; and while I realize there's one other OS that's much more explicitly religion-oriented, I'm not sure it's quite a significant pattern yet...

  "(God), give me grace
  to accept with serenity
  the things that cannot be changed,
  Courage to change the things
  which should be changed,
  and the Wisdom to distinguish
  the one from the other."


This is the version I'm familiar with:

    God, grant me the Serenity
    To accept the things I cannot change...
    Courage to change the things I can,
    And Wisdom to know the difference.


It's basically "should I use sudo or not" as a prayer.


> Whats with operating systems and religion

Many daemons lurk in OSes. Sometimes religion provides the comfort and safety you need to face the horrors hiding in operating systems.


He opened with the explanation of doing this after coming out of rehab for drug addiction - I wouldn’t say it is related to “religion”, rather a nod/reminder for himself in why he’s doing it. Nothing beyond that it seems.


> Whats with operating systems and religion

Confirmation bias; religion is everywhere, no reason to expect it to be exceptionally absent from computing/programming/operating systems etc.


Have you never been in a debate about vim vs. emacs?


There is no debate.


I think Vim won by virtue of already being installed.


Ehhh. Vi is already installed, and it is often not Vim.

Nano, on the other hand...


Proper software development is indistinguishable from mysticism.


Don't go hating on my boy Terry (pbuh):

"The got rid of CD/DVD. they are coming for our guns."


"You know the secret? The difference between heaven and hell? It's, like, doing your work. You feel really shitty if you don't do your work. If you do your work, it's fucking awesome."


I suspect you have 1 other example. How many can you come up with that have nothing to do with religion?


The one other example is obviously either FreeBSD, whose mascot is a demon, or OSX, which itself is a religion. ;)


Also, for better or worse, TempleOS.


This is what I was referencing. Though I think the other poster may know and was making a joke.


The majority of the human population is religious. Software is generally created by humans so it doesn’t seem unlikely that some of that influence would rub off on their work (same as any other work of art really).


[flagged]


Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, let alone religious flamewar god help us.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Fair enough Dan. I do have a tendency to walk the line but I like to think I'm reasonable enough to know when to backpedal. Apologies to yourself and Jagger. I'll try and be nicer.



I'd not heard of that but it seems fairly accurate. It seems related to pg's idea of middle-brow dismissal.


Care to expand on those bold assertions?


I'm not sure what you consider bold about the assertions so it's difficult to expand. I am certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed, and I'm religious, so that provides at least circumstantial evidence for my initial statement.

Do you think I should consider that atheists could be dumb too? Most of the ones I've spoken to seem fairly convinced that they're reasonably smart.


Alright it's clear you're only here to rile people up. Not sure why you think that's appropriate here.


[flagged]


I'm sorry, do you think you're being "intellectually explorative" with unsubstantiated statements like "atheism is for the mediocre mind"?.


Please do not respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. It only makes everything worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


My apologies for upsetting you. Please see upthread for my apology to yourself and Dan.




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