Author: Don Dailey
Date: 10:12:35 01/13/99
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Hi Fernando, I have a serious disagreement with your idea that programming is not an art. I believe it is well recognized to be one. I forgive you however realizing that as you have stated yourself, you are not a programmer. To many people not having familiarity with programming it is a very dry excercise comparable to accounting (woops, not the accountants are going to flame me!) But I can tell you that for a fact our art is very similar to yours! There are an unlimited number of ways to express yourself in language, and the same is true of programming which is also a language. And every task can be done ugly, or beautiful and elegant. And the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. The amount of creativty involved in writing almost any program can be enormous indeed. I also suggest some reading material for you: The art of computer programming by Donald Knuth. Start with volume 1. - Don On January 12, 1999 at 18:56:47, Fernando Villegas wrote: >Dear Don: >Thanks for your kind words about my "artistry". Sure I would like they were >fully truth :-) Respect your reasonning, I see in it some flaws because of your >examples and perhaps, if you used them as mental models to create your own >reasonning, that's the reason you are somewhat mistaken in this point. Let me >explain: >To produce a product is not the same to compete. You produce or can produce >something adding things, efforts, etc. In fact, that's the esence to do >something. To compete is to decide which product or perfomance or whatever is >best according a criteria, so it is something enterily different. In the first >case it is obvious some process of aditions can be -not neccesarily, but it can >be- useful for the final product; in the second case it is obvious that not >adition counts, but just comparison between isolated competitive elements. The >fastest man of the world IS the fastest, no matter if all population of the >earth compete against him. And so and so, including Gary againts all genuses of >the world, including you and me :-) But if adition is the point, even the best >guy in the world to use the showel cannot create a deepest hole as a million >guys could do. >Now, I think that a chess program cannot be catalogued as a piece of art and so >programming cannot be catalogued as an artistic process. It is based in >techniques that are known, that accumulates in times, that can be compared each >other in terms of eficacy, etc. So chess programming approach a lot more to a >clasic technnological enterprise AND THEN AND SO the addition process gets great >importance, if not decisive. You cannot say that a Charly Parker jazz >improvisation is "better" than one by Coleman Hakwkins, because a real work of >art is something individual, uncomparable, valid in itself for ever. But of >course you can compare between chess programs. CM2000 is not a piece of art >valid forever, just a piece of software valid until a better one made of it a >piece of obsolescence. >Yes, some tech. enterprises can seems to be an art craft because the initial >isolation of the creators, some fuzzyness of the techniques, etc, BUT that is >not enough to think that will be the way to do things forever. I am sure that >Curie was a talented man, but I am sure that sistematic work in any modern >commercial laboratory produces tenfold more ideas and approaches that what weas >done by Curie all his life. In this, sciences, it is matter of critical mass, >specially when this "mass" is highly skilled people. >Fernando
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