You’re Master Foo from “Unix Koans of Master Foo”.

A software engineer pays his respects, bows three times, and asks:

“Master Foo, my work days are full of meetings, certainly this is not the Way of Unix?”

The master was trimming a bonsai when the engineer spoke.

He set down his shears. “Show me your calendar,” he said.

The engineer turned his screen. It was a wall of rectangles.

Master Foo nodded. “Behold a system where every process is waiting on blocking I/O.”

“But meetings are required,” the engineer protested. “Surely this is not the Way of Unix.”

“The Way is not the absence of meetings,” said Master Foo, “but their smallness and composability.”

He pointed to the bonsai. “We do not hate branches; we prune.”

The master picked up his shears again. “A good meeting is like a well-written

filter: it consumes a defined input, emits a useful output, and then exits.”

The engineer bowed.

From that day, many rectangles vanished from his calendar, and the remaining

ones grew small and sharp.