On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 20:23 +0100, thor wrote:
> No, that's precisely the point. When re-reading the sentence above I
> think
> I should clarify that I meant "thinking with the finger" i.e. that
> the
> thought itself is happening "in the finger" and not only in the brain.
But then I can counter-argue that a livecoder can think with the
computer.
> (if that makes sense). Neither in typing nor guitar playing do I
> think about what my fingers are doing. I'm just saying that thinking
> and playing seem to be pretty much the same process (in real-time)
> when playing acoustic instruments whereas thinking and programming
> has this special latency.
Yep but by encoding your actions in a computer program you're trading
off latency for throughput.
> That's where the Flow comes in. I agree that one can get totally
> absorbed
> in a coding session but that's not the same type of (embodied) flow
> that we have with the instruments we play.
I agree it's different, I'm just not sure how different.
> : )
> And text is certainly not bad. It's great to be explicit and define
> clearly
> what one wants to do. Write it down in a text that a machine
> interprets.
It's also great to write code in a hurry that seems insane in retrospect
and obscures the original intention completely.
> Both worlds are wonderful. And for me the differences are interesting.
Agreed, but also the similarities are interesting too.
I feel I am playing devil's advocate here...
alex
Received on Wed Sep 06 2006 - 22:38:08 BST