The Pope’s death reminds me of Chapter 3 of Joel Spolsky’s book on User Interface Design for Programmers. . That is not surprising, because a lot of things remind me of Chapter 3 of Joel Spolsky’s Book on User Interface Design for Programmers.
This is how Chapter 3 of Joel Spolsky’s Book on User Interface Design for Programmers starts:
When you go into a restaurant and you see a sign that says “No Dogs Allowed,” you might think that sign is purely proscriptive: Mr. Restaurant doesn’t like dogs around, so when he built the restaurant he put up that sign.
If that was all that was going on, there would also be a “No Snakes” sign; after all, nobody likes snakes. And a “No Elephants” sign, because they break the chairs when they sit down.
The real reason that sign is there is historical: it is a historical marker that indicates that people used to try to bring their dogs into the restaurant.
Most prohibitive signs are there because the proprietors of an establishment were sick and tired of people doing X, so they made a sign asking them to please not. If you go into one of those fifty year old ma-and-pa diners, like the Yankee Doodle in New Haven, the walls are covered with signs saying things like “Please don’t put your knapsack on the counter,” more anthropological evidence that people used to put their knapsacks on the counter a lot. By the age of the sign you can figure out when knapsacks were popular among local students.
So what has this got to do with the Pope’s death? I was wondering about the fact that the Pope does not have a deputy who can take over from him automatically. There’s usually a reason for that, and the reason is to pre-empt rivals and plots. That tells you something about the history of the Papacy. If you need further proof, look at the rules for electing a new Pope.