INTERVIEWER: What do you mean when you say programming is a religious experience for a lot of people?

[GARY] KILDALL: Well, if you talk about programming to a group of programmers who use the same language, they can become almost evangelistic about the language. They form a tight-knit community, hold to certain beliefs, and follow certain rules in their programming. It's like a church with a programming language for a bible... But I'm not putting myself in a special category either; I can preach about the wonders of LISP all day.

--excerpt from Programmers at Work, S. Lammers

Aren't some mutually exclusive?

I find it very strange, and revealing, that neither he nor the interviewer mentioned Christ or the New Testament.

He is probably Jewish. Anyway, if you tried to follow also the new testament it would get silly. E.g. just regarding the hair issue, the mosaic law say you must not cut your hair, Jesus say we have to follow the mosaic law, and Paul say that a man must not have long hair.

It quickly gets impossible, which is why the different Christian denominations chose various interpretations where they only have to follow a subset of the laws and directives put forth in the bible.

You can't follow every rule in the bible if they all conflict with each other; he had to leave out one of the testaments.

AJ's Jewish.

I think I would have been stoned several times already (by rocks thrown at me, not drugs).

wow -- anybody know the rule that says you have to have a beard?

Leviticus 19:27 says (in the KJV translation) "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard."