The Zen of Parallel Programming: The Posture of a Kernel

>The article makes a lot more sense if you've practiced Zen.

>Think of it as someone's way of making sense of Zen teachings by related them to something they already understand.

Ok, so blog spam it is.

What this particular blog post is doing is just taking some Zen principles and trying to find their nearest equivalent. Since Zen is the fixed constant here, the expected outcome is that we will learn very little about parallel programming and almost exclusively about Zen.

When the blog post is titled "The Zen of Parallel Programming", what people imagine is talking about the core philosophy, "inner spirit" or ultimate guiding principle of parallel programming.

The thought that crossed the authors mind when he titled his blog isn't that, it's about a anthropomorphism where parallel programming itself is practicing Zen, e.g. in the form of kernels taking place of the human practitioner, hence "The Zen of Parallel Programming" is not metaphorical at all.

This means whatever the author is writing about is completely at their whims. You could have made the same point about how the GPU processors keep switching between threads or instructions. The author just liked the idea of GPU kernels dancing because it sounded spiritual.