[HN Gopher] Programming is boring art
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Programming is boring art
Author : tomkwong
Score : 59 points
Date : 2020-05-30 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ahsmart.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ahsmart.com)
| zabzonk wrote:
| IMHO, alert() should be called at a higher level by something
| that calls check().
| trmsw wrote:
| Upvoting this just for the title ... and was disappointed by the
| article. Rats.
| tomkwong wrote:
| Appreciate the upvote anyways LOL
| trmsw wrote:
| You're welcome. It's an attention economy these days
| Tade0 wrote:
| This brought me back to the time my SO tried to explain an 84
| year old lady she was assisting what is it that I do for a
| living.
|
| The consensus was that I'm a writer.
|
| Also there's one thing I ask everyone seeking to get into
| programming: "are you resistant to boredom?"
|
| This appears to be a good predictor of future success.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Hmm, interesting. I can't tell, though, if that question means,
| "do you not bore easily?" or "do you avoid boredom at all
| costs?"
| WalterBright wrote:
| I find football/baseball games to be incredibly boring. I posit
| that successful ball players must be highly resistant to
| boredom.
| gorpovitch wrote:
| When I hear people talking about programming as an art, I usually
| assume that the decisions they make about their code tend to be
| about how elegant and beautiful it is, not efficient and
| valuable. It's fun and satisfying to write elegant code, but your
| company hired you to produce value, not art.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Elegant and beautiful things are often also efficient and
| valuable.
| tomkwong wrote:
| Right, there is also difference between short-term value and
| long-term value.
| golemiprague wrote:
| I wouldn't say it is an art, more like a craft in the good cases
| and plain technical at worst
| phkahler wrote:
| One of the most beautiful pieces of code I've ever read is this:
|
| https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/blob/master/src/srf...
|
| If you have a basic understanding of spline and NURBS surfaces
| but never knew how you might actually implement that, well there
| it is. Incredibly readable IMHO.
| kgraves wrote:
| sorry, but I see no beauty in this.
| phkahler wrote:
| You have to read it to see the straight forward simplicity in
| it. Like I said, it also helps to have a high level
| understanding of the subject matter. The culmination at the
| end - finding the intersection point of 3 parametric surfaces
| - is artful IMHO.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I'm right there with you.
| paulcole wrote:
| I see a lot of beauty in this.
| alexashka wrote:
| Life itself is boring art. Everything else is just an extension
| of that.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Depends on your Serotonin level
| loltyler1 wrote:
| Have an upvote fellow depressed
| spicyramen wrote:
| In college a teacher asked us if programming was an art. There is
| the element of creation, copying and some may say beauty. The
| artist or programmer in this case use their knowledge, creativity
| and experience to create something new intangible and subjective
| appreciation but results can be life changing or solve a really
| complex problem. In terms of boredom this is subjective sometimes
| I find it really fun try to solve a problem or fix a bug
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > There is nothing wrong with this function. Really. It does
| exactly what it should do with the least amount of code. In fact,
| this is probably what I want to deploy in production as well.
| But, it is inflexible.
|
| No, it's not, it does one well-defined thing, and does it well!
|
| > A skillful programmer looks at the problem and says, hey, why
| don't we build an abstraction layer to make it more flexible?
|
| In this example, the additional complexity just doesn't seem
| justified. You ain't gonna need it. [0] Unnecessary abstractions
| cause bugs, bloat, and baggage. The article then goes on to
| acknowledge this, but I really question the chosen example.
|
| > Just having these few abstractions opens up a lot of
| possibilities. Why? Let's suppose that you have 3 different kinds
| of fetchers and 3 kinds of notifiers. Now, you can easily compose
| 3 x 3 = 9 different kinds of health checks.
|
| You've just introduced an exponential explosion into your testing
| burden. The pay-off: additional functionality that _might_ be
| useful later.
|
| > Enjoy your programming life. It's a fun art!
|
| The article doesn't go into detail on what it means here, but the
| more serious the software work, the less the artistic mindset
| applies. [1]
|
| I think the most sensible approach to software engineering is to
| draw satisfaction from solving a challenging problem well. Things
| like 'programmer freedom' strike me as false idols.
|
| That said, I'm a sucker for elegance (a famously subjective
| commodity), so maybe I'm a hypocrite.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it
|
| [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
| cutler wrote:
| Good Clojure and Ruby code, in that order, is the closest to art.
| Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) also
| deals with abstraction so elegantly you could consider it art.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > _How boring is it to produce something of the same shape over
| and over again._
|
| Same applies to any text written. Yet, few people would argue
| there aren't any artists among novelists, screenwriters, and
| poets.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| It's as boring as one's ability to be mindful, non-
| judgmental/accepting of the moment, and ability to be grateful
| for whatever's happening right now.
|
| These are all skills I'm pretty sure not mentioned in most
| programming books/blogs, much less schools.
|
| Boredom comes from within. Pointing at a thing and saying
| "that's boring" is a conflation of what's really going on: "I
| haven't learned to enjoy myself in this context yet and am
| blaming the context for it."
| narrationbox wrote:
| Does copywriting count as art? Or is it merely the equivalent
| of CRUD-style boilerplate?
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Depends on your definition of art. Good copywriting must be a
| very skilful trade. Not sure about the whole "must serve no
| purpose other than itself" aspect.
| tomkwong wrote:
| OP here. What you said is very true. Visual impression isn't
| the only dimension. Nowadays, it seems that most people
| (especially the younger generation) just want to watch a video
| than reading a book. There is bounded to be something missing
| with a different medium.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asemic_writing
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_book
| tomkwong wrote:
| Interesting. Thanks for the share.
|
| I wonder if programming fonts could achieve that - like the
| original author could specify a font for a portion of the code
| eg. a "destroy_context" or "drop_connection" function could
| have a scary look.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Yeah! Or syntax highlighting that confers some emotional
| valence to runtime behavior (allocating resources - say,
| calling a constructor for instantiating objects - having a
| different color)
| tomkwong wrote:
| Another way to express semantics is the use of Unicode in
| source code. For example, I have this Julia package that
| performs Box-Cox transformation, and I was able to use bold
| face for vector data and greek letters for the parameters as
| found in research paper and literatures.
|
| https://github.com/tk3369/BoxCoxTrans.jl/blob/master/src/Box...
| klysm wrote:
| I've been conflicted about using verbose names or symbols for
| mathematical expressions in code, and I don't think there's
| an easy answer for when to use them. For simple arithmetic
| expressions, it seems like verbose names are superior because
| it's easier to derive their meaning and we already understand
| the operators at play. When translating complex expressions,
| however, we usually a priori understand the meaning of the
| expression with our algebraic mental model and it makes sense
| to use that nomenclature. At the same time though, someone
| who is unfamiliar with the particular source of the algebra
| used would find such code quite opaque. For something like
| the Box-Cox transform I think it makes sense to use the
| symbols widely employed by the mathematical nomenclature.
|
| This certainly also depends on the language you are using and
| the ability to define arbitrary in/postfix operations.
|
| It's also rather annoying to type them, but that's also
| probably because I just haven't developed a workflow for it.
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