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Yeah, I wanted to say that too. You can't (always) separate enjoying the craft from enjoying the praise. People too often talk about the value of an art object

Yeah, I wanted to say that too. You can't (always) separate enjoying the craft from enjoying the praise. People too often talk about the value of an art object divorced from its provenance, as if you could measure its goodness with a meter, instead of the value of the audience relating to the personality expressed in it, which means it's a communication, and the communication isn't all one-way. When you're crafting something you're initiating that communication. Of course you want praise, or distressed complaints or anyway some reaction.

eszed 5d ago
I agree with all of that, but I think there's a bit of "ball-hiding" going on in most of these conversations. It isn't only that programmers crave(d) praise or social recognition (though maybe that's it for some), but they're also having to come to terms with the fact that their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value. They were able, for a long time, to (and I say this absolutely non-pejoratively - in fact, just the opposite) have their cake and eat it too, by being virtually guaranteed to make a living (in practice, in the demographic most represented on this board, a very good one) doing a thing they love to do. It's gauche, in Anglo-Saxon countries, to talk openly about one's own financial circumstances, so that mostly doesn't get raised in these threads, but I can hear it in the background of most of them, like "whaddya mean no one's gonna pay me to solve interesting problems with code any more? Now I've gotta do that, if I'm ever going to do that at all, in my spare time, for free?" And I so, so, so sympathize with that. I devoted 25 years of my life to the performing arts, from which - as a very unattached young man - I was able scrape an exceedingly frugal living. That, in the arts, is a success story - the vast majority make no living from doing it at all, in fact probably the reverse. Coders arguably have it worse: it's hard to see anyone making any money from "writing code", ever again. It's not surprising to me that they're confused and hurt right now: they have, quickly, sadly, and unexpectedly been pushed into the economic corner other artists always have occupied.
- Chris2048 4d ago
  > their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value Can you define art/artist? If software is art, then what profession isn't? Software still has value, specifically utility, it's just cheaper to produce, its market value is lower. How is that comparable to the arts?
  - card_zero 4d ago
    Dwarf Fortress (the ASCII version) was exhibited in MoMA. I think software sits in an interesting place between shovels and Fabergé eggs.
  - eszed 3d ago
    Oh, you're not going to bait me into that one! "What is Art?" is the central 20th century aesthetic question, which no one ever answered to anyone else's satisfaction. Nowadays artists and critics have mostly stopped addressing it, because it's just exhausting, and everyone gets on with whatever it is they do. (But, yes: every profession can be Art is one of the answers some people propose! You can make your own mind up about that.) What I observe, however, is that the people on this board who most mourn the end of hand-coding talk about code much like artists talk about art. It also, if it is to continue, looks like it will be an aesthetics-driven pursuit, appreciated by its practioners and a small cognoscenti. However you care to define the practice itself, economically speaking, that's an art market. Probably, those folks are in an even worse position than that. Though I've written some software I'm proud of, I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly competent developer, and while I can appreciate clean code, and love 'the story of Mel', and all that, would I pay extra for an artisanal, organic, free-range, hand-coded app or whatever? No, I frankly wouldn't - and I'm to the right of probably 98% of the general population on the appreciates-software-aesthetics curve. The fine arts world depends on the money it generates from its own rightmost 2%, but are there enough wealthy patrons for whom hand-crafted software will be a prestige marker? That's difficult to imagine.

eszed 5d ago

I agree with all of that, but I think there's a bit of "ball-hiding" going on in most of these conversations. It isn't only that programmers crave(d) praise or social recognition (though maybe that's it for some), but they're also having to come to terms with the fact that their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value. They were able, for a long time, to (and I say this absolutely non-pejoratively - in fact, just the opposite) have their cake and eat it too, by being virtually guaranteed to make a living (in practice, in the demographic most represented on this board, a very good one) doing a thing they love to do. It's gauche, in Anglo-Saxon countries, to talk openly about one's own financial circumstances, so that mostly doesn't get raised in these threads, but I can hear it in the background of most of them, like "whaddya mean no one's gonna pay me to solve interesting problems with code any more? Now I've gotta do that, if I'm ever going to do that at all, in my spare time, for free?" And I so, so, so sympathize with that. I devoted 25 years of my life to the performing arts, from which - as a very unattached young man - I was able scrape an exceedingly frugal living. That, in the arts, is a success story - the vast majority make no living from doing it at all, in fact probably the reverse. Coders arguably have it worse: it's hard to see anyone making any money from "writing code", ever again. It's not surprising to me that they're confused and hurt right now: they have, quickly, sadly, and unexpectedly been pushed into the economic corner other artists always have occupied.

Chris2048 4d ago
> their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value Can you define art/artist? If software is art, then what profession isn't? Software still has value, specifically utility, it's just cheaper to produce, its market value is lower. How is that comparable to the arts?
- card_zero 4d ago
  Dwarf Fortress (the ASCII version) was exhibited in MoMA. I think software sits in an interesting place between shovels and Fabergé eggs.
- eszed 3d ago
  Oh, you're not going to bait me into that one! "What is Art?" is the central 20th century aesthetic question, which no one ever answered to anyone else's satisfaction. Nowadays artists and critics have mostly stopped addressing it, because it's just exhausting, and everyone gets on with whatever it is they do. (But, yes: every profession can be Art is one of the answers some people propose! You can make your own mind up about that.) What I observe, however, is that the people on this board who most mourn the end of hand-coding talk about code much like artists talk about art. It also, if it is to continue, looks like it will be an aesthetics-driven pursuit, appreciated by its practioners and a small cognoscenti. However you care to define the practice itself, economically speaking, that's an art market. Probably, those folks are in an even worse position than that. Though I've written some software I'm proud of, I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly competent developer, and while I can appreciate clean code, and love 'the story of Mel', and all that, would I pay extra for an artisanal, organic, free-range, hand-coded app or whatever? No, I frankly wouldn't - and I'm to the right of probably 98% of the general population on the appreciates-software-aesthetics curve. The fine arts world depends on the money it generates from its own rightmost 2%, but are there enough wealthy patrons for whom hand-crafted software will be a prestige marker? That's difficult to imagine.