1. Understanding is null

The tao that can be told
isn’t the real tao
The name that is given
is not the real name

The unnamable persists 
names are for things

Free from the names, you see the tao
Captured in the names, you see processes

Still, the tao and the process
spring from the same nothing

Understanding is null

This is one of those vague opening chapters that only makes sense after you’ve read the rest of the book. It still makes sense to start here, though, because this is where Lao Tzu is telling us where software development starts from.

Lao Tzu makes it clear here that when you start, you start from nothing. From that nothing, two things arise – the unnamable, persistent, tao creates ideas and solutions, and the named manifestations of things and processes those ideas and solutions create.

Every. Software. Project. has both of these things.

The tao

Even if you can’t see it, every software project has a path for how ideas turn into solutions. This path exists beyond (and even separate from) any specific, named processes or tools. It’s what really happens during the creation process. The named artifacts, processes and tools are ‘named things’ – manifestations or interpretations of the creation process, not the creation process itself.

It’s important to seek the tao, because it’s not obvious. It’s not name-able, it’s not documented. The path you see is not the real path, the path you see free of the processes and labels is the tao.

Seeking to understand the tao will enable you and your creations to follow the tao instead of fight it, as we’ll discuss in other chapters.

Named things

“Named things” are all the things we give names, objects, variables, processes, developers themselves, all of it. But in this chapter Lao Tzu directs us at process specifically, and I feel that’s a way to help differentiate the tao that spawns the ideas and solutions that carry software out the door from the manifestations we often assume do that.

Lao Tzu is pointing out that whatever process you have for delivering software, be it:

• A disaster of an undocumented and manual build and deployment process; or
• A highly integrated continuous integration and continuous deployment path; or
• butterflies; or
• something not listed;

your process is actually just a manifestation produced by the tao which actually does the work. It’s important to know and understand both, because they both have to work together_._

How do we understand both?

Understanding is null

He also tells us that Understanding – the big understanding, the really knowing what’s going on – means understanding the root of both the tao and the named manifestations.

Both of those spring from the empty string.

It all starts there, at nothing, and it all returns there, such that it may be created again. If you haven’t dug down to null, you don’t have the whole picture.