Programming Lessons from Japanese Poetry

Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry form known for its brevity, simplicity, and objectivity. Modern haiku is being practiced in other languages as well, including English. The structure of modern English haiku is slightly different from the traditional Japanese form but it still adheres to those three principles. This talk provides a brief introduction to haiku, its poetic ideals, and how it resonates with some of the ideas presented in the Zen of Python. It aims to share with the audience lessons from haiku writing (such as minimalism in writing code and objectivity in collaboration), which are helpful not just in Python programming and software engineering design but also in how we approach problems in general.