On 02/04/2008, alex <alex_at_lurk.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 17:33 +0200, Marcel Wierckx wrote:
> > "The practice of programming is informed by the corporate world of
> > business software, with its talk
> > of formal design, unit testing and ISO quality assurance. This all
> > attempts to drive the creativity
> > out of programming so that software may be as predictable as possible."
> >
> > I find this to be an unnecessarily pessimistic statement.
>
>
> Yes I admit this section is overblown and perhaps a little outdated. I
> decided to leave it in, because there is plenty of truth in it. Despite
> the readiness of counter-examples this side of the software industry
> does exist, lures many talented young programmers in with highly paid
> jobs, and has a heavy bearing on computer science in many universities
> (certainly on the course I went through). I certainly didn't have
> students like yours in mind!
It may be worth pointing out that Marcel teaches programming (mainly in
MAX/MSP, I believe) at a school that's dedicated to music and media, not
music at a school dedicated to computer science.
I do think that what you (Alex) are pointing out is a very real phenomenon
and that despite all our great toys and the work of teachers like Marcel the
perspective on programming that society at large has is still close to the
one you outline and I do think this affects our tools. For example ChucK is
heavily influenced by C/C++ which in turn is heavily influenced by this
corporate structure (fortunately there are plenty of other influences quite
contrary to this!).
When explaining what I do (in this context) I've run into fellow artists who
-with a straight face- explained to me programming inherently couldn't be a
creative endeavour.
I don't think this is bad. C and languages like Smaltalk, Perl and Scheme
form a nicely solid foundation to build some insanity on so that once we get
to the fun stuff it will work and indeed I feel that surprising people with
expressive music/graphics in a context where they don't expect it is great
fun, but we do need to realise the influence is there and is real, I think.
At least it's a better context to work with -and against- then the reference
that programming is "like HTML", something I heard as well. I hope HTML
wizards and fanatics will understand and forgive me if I find that harder to
deal with. ;¬)
So; I agree with both of you yet think there is no reason for pessimism at
all. Of course there is a conflict with society at large but unless I'm
reading the manifesto in some odd way it's tailor made for exactly that
collision course, which I feel is great fun.
Cheers,
Kas.
Received on Wed Apr 02 2008 - 21:18:14 BST