For information about the Aes Sedai, read the
Wheel of Time series, by
Robert Jordan. Aes Sedai are similar to modern day programmers.
As a starting point, the
One Power is like processing power. There are a few ways that saidin and saidar could be viewed, but
Mac and
Intel map most strongly.
The
Ajahs are similar to different types of coders:
-
Blue: Programmers with a cause. Examples include Richard Stallman and David LaMacchia. Aes Sedai of the Blue Ajah believe in their causes, although perhaps not as strongly as RMS believes in his.
-
Red: Crackers. Crackers are looked down on by other programmers, and often avoid them, creating their own separate society. This is very similar to the attitude of the Reds, who discourage friendship outside the Ajah.
-
Brown: Academics and professors. The Brown Ajah of programming includes (most) computer scientists, and some mathematicians and scientists. Their goal is knowledge, and from my experience, many of them have the "lost-in-thought" appearance that characterizes the Brown Ajah. Donald Knuth would be a member of the Brown Ajah.
-
White: Many programmers view programming as an exercise in pure logic. These are largely corporate programmers who work with things of great structure such as databases. See "code grinders".
-
Green: OS/processor/editor fanatics. The Green Ajah is the battle Ajah, and many OS and processor advocates certainly act like there is a war on. See the Jargon File on "holy wars", or ask me about why Emacs is the best editor :-)
-
Grey: System Administrators mediate between users, solve disputes, and forge agreements between PHBs and average users. This Ajah maps more weakly than those above.
-
Yellow: Troubleshooters, tech support. While Aes Sedai of the Yellow Ajah heal people, their programmer equivalents heal computers.
-
Black: Microsoft programmers ;-)
Self-taught programmers are respected by the community of programmers, but looked down upon by the corporate world ("suits"). The corporate world (the establishment) is equvalent to the White Tower, if slightly more fragmented. Compare Jordan's description of when a "
wilder" first channels with the "
larval stage", as defined in the Jargon File.
This analogy doesn't fit perfectly, since Unix and C aren't that evil, but the
addictiveness is. See "C Programmer's Disease". The marks of a C programmer (especially a C programmer on Unix ("
unixisms") are as distinctive as saa. See also: "
Worse Is Better".
Angreal and
sa'angreal are like extra processors/computers,
coprocessors, more
RAM, etc. The relation should be obvious to a
programmer; All of the computer components listed let you do more, process more data, and do more things at a time. Angreal and sa'angreal let Aes Sedai
channel more weaves simultaneously, and do more with them.
Normal weaves of the
One Power don't require user interaction. Some are like one-use programs, some hang around running (like
daemons), some hang around until triggered, then do something (like
httpd).
There's probably a bunch more stuff that I'm missing ... I guess I could probably think of 13 Forsaken:
Bill Gates,
Kevin Mitnick,
James Gosling, ....