5 ms·

More of a craft than an art. Sometimes it's more like woodworking, sometimes it's more like plumbing, but it's rarely anything like painting.

by loafa 10y ago

dtjohnnymonkey 10y ago
I have a friend who is an artist that spent the last 10 years working on his painting skills. I observed one interesting parallel between developing skills as a painter and as a programmer based on conversations with him. Beginning painters tend to get overly focused on very small details without having a good understanding of how they are bringing the painting as a whole together. They spend too much time on these details, whereas advanced painters are able to move very quickly with faster strokes. It's pretty amazing to see a painting where the strokes don't make sense when you look at them one-by-one, but the overall effect truly reflects something from reality. I found this to be true also with inexperienced developers. We focus on the latest trends, micro-optimizations, coding styles, and "small" details that are easier to master -- yet we struggle with the bigger picture things like delivering a product quickly. Kind of like the saying "you can't see the forest for the trees". (You focus on the incidental details, but not the larger purpose) On a slightly different note, I have several friends who are writers and I have found programming to be very similar to writing a novel. You have to construct a coherent world that "compiles", e.g. the characters interactions are consistent and make sense; each character has a role in the story like a component in a program would have; simplicity and directness tend to be more effective than ornateness; small changes in one part of a dialogue can have cascading changes across the rest of the storyline, much like a refactoring gone wrong.
cynwoody 10y ago
Some years ago now, I came upon a lovely essay entitled "Hackers and Painters†". Here is how it begins: When I finished grad school in computer science I went to art school to study painting. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting. They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work-- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge. Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike. What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better. I think he got it right. †http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
- ardivekar 10y ago
  Paul has an entire book of his essays by the same title, it's a great read all kinds of programmers. :)
thevibesman 10y ago
I'd have to disagree; I view programming as an art similar both to music composition but also very much like painting---this may require expanding your definition of panting from the classical sense to the Dada sense of found object sculpture as a form of painting/making-your-own-paint (can't find citation, but there is a good Marcel Duchamp paper about making your own paint I was trying to find---but late for work!).

More of a craft than an art. Sometimes it's more like woodworking, sometimes it's more like plumbing, but it's rarely anything like painting.

by loafa 10y ago

More of a craft than an art. Sometimes it's more like woodworking, sometimes it's more like plumbing, but it's rarely anything like painting.

dtjohnnymonkey 10y ago

I have a friend who is an artist that spent the last 10 years working on his painting skills. I observed one interesting parallel between developing skills as a painter and as a programmer based on conversations with him. Beginning painters tend to get overly focused on very small details without having a good understanding of how they are bringing the painting as a whole together. They spend too much time on these details, whereas advanced painters are able to move very quickly with faster strokes. It's pretty amazing to see a painting where the strokes don't make sense when you look at them one-by-one, but the overall effect truly reflects something from reality. I found this to be true also with inexperienced developers. We focus on the latest trends, micro-optimizations, coding styles, and "small" details that are easier to master -- yet we struggle with the bigger picture things like delivering a product quickly. Kind of like the saying "you can't see the forest for the trees". (You focus on the incidental details, but not the larger purpose) On a slightly different note, I have several friends who are writers and I have found programming to be very similar to writing a novel. You have to construct a coherent world that "compiles", e.g. the characters interactions are consistent and make sense; each character has a role in the story like a component in a program would have; simplicity and directness tend to be more effective than ornateness; small changes in one part of a dialogue can have cascading changes across the rest of the storyline, much like a refactoring gone wrong.

cynwoody 10y ago

Some years ago now, I came upon a lovely essay entitled "Hackers and Painters†". Here is how it begins: When I finished grad school in computer science I went to art school to study painting. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting. They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work-- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge. Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike. What hackers and painters have in common is that they're both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better. I think he got it right. †http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

ardivekar 10y ago
Paul has an entire book of his essays by the same title, it's a great read all kinds of programmers. :)

thevibesman 10y ago

I'd have to disagree; I view programming as an art similar both to music composition but also very much like painting---this may require expanding your definition of panting from the classical sense to the Dada sense of found object sculpture as a form of painting/making-your-own-paint (can't find citation, but there is a good Marcel Duchamp paper about making your own paint I was trying to find---but late for work!).