7 ms·
Is Programming Poetry?
- pachydermic 11y agoBEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time. open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us); write it, print the hex while each watches, reverse its length, write again; kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them. unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait), sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep"); kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities, values aside, each one; die sheep! die to reverse the system you accept (reject, respect); next step, kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice, wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased"; do it ("as they say"). do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*). return last victim; package body; exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it, select (quickly) & warn your next victim; AFTERWARDS: tell nobody. wait, wait until time; wait until next year, next decade; sleep, sleep, die yourself, die at last # Larry Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Perl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Perl
- loser777 11y agoReminded me of this fantastic talk about demoscene programming called "Poems for Bugs"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZNjB5jmHdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZNjB5jmHdE
- calebm 11y agoNo (I don't agree with the poetry definition put forth), but programming is LIKE poetry is some ways. Here's one way: analogies in poetry are like libraries in programming; an analogy (like a library function call) can convey a mountain of meaning.
- strickjb9 11y agoThe author knew he was being provocative and later revokes his theory due to code not being able to evoke emotion. But I disagree, I've felt rage many of times while code reviewing.
- andreasvc 11y agoWhy don't you agree with the poetry definition put forth? Do you have a counterexample or alternative definition?
- masswerk 11y agoFor an example of some great code that is both to the point and expressive, see the original code version for the "Expensive Planetarium" by Peter Samson (PDP-1 Macro-assembler, 1962). – The Expensive Planetarium is a piece of autonomous code inside Spacewar!, the first digital video game, displaying a slowly moving realistic background starfield. [1] http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/insidespacewar-pt1-ep.html#spacewar2b http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/insidespacewar-pt1-ep...
- jlhim 11y agobefore it was called programming it was called poetical science.
- manlio 11y agoFell in love with this one years ago, and still love it... #!/usr/bin/perl APPEAL: listen (please, please); open yourself, wide; join (you, me), connect (us,together), tell me. do something if distressed; @dawn, dance; @evening, sing; read (books,$poems,stories) until peaceful; study if able; write me if-you-please; sort your feelings, reset goals, seek (friends, family, anyone); do*not*die (like this) if sin abounds; keys (hidden), open (locks, doors), tell secrets; do not, I-beg-you, close them, yet. accept (yourself, changes), bind (grief, despair); require truth, goodness if-you-will, each moment; select (always), length(of-days) # listen (a perl poem) # Sharon Hopkins # rev. June 19, 1995
- BFay 11y agoLinux Poetry is relevant: http://linuxpoetry.com/ http://linuxpoetry.com/
- rch 11y agoE.E. Cummings might been writing code, with syntactically significant whitespace no less.
- pmalynin 11y agoe e cummings actually please use the right capitalization and punctuation lol
- boken 11y ago"E.E. Cummings" is fine. It's what he used.[0] On the top of Cummings, I have occasionally felt like I was faced with an incomplete set of instructions when reading certain of his poems. Of course, there's no particular reason to liken them to computer instructions; I've never seen anything in the poems to suggest a connection. Anything to link one art with another is a stretch—if we even accept that coding is an art. (I think code can be, though it isn't as a rule. In the same way, writing can be artful but is typically workaday and unremarkable. This post, for an example.) 0: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/caps.htm http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/caps.htm
- branchless 11y agoVogon poetry in most code bases.
- Scarblac 11y agoctrl-F Vogon, check. I guess it's _possible_ to write poetry in programming language, but the only times I've seen someone try the result was forgettable (it looked like a non syntactical mix of a number of languages and sucked as poetry). Real code is only poetry in the Vogon sense.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- code_sterling 11y agoIf programming is poetry, then I write limericks for a living.
- eamsen 11y agoCode isn't poetry, but the craft of code writing resembles writing poetry in terms of rhythm and aesthetics in a highly abstracted form.
- totoroisalive 11y agoNO
- efferifick 11y agoDidn't read the article but I wanted to share this quote I read once: "Mathematics is a language where truth rhymes".
- Harimwakairi 11y agoNo, it isn't. Poetry is an entirely separate discipline with a long list of associated skills, some of which overlap with those possessed by a good programmer. You're not a poet unless you're a poet, so just call yourself a good coder for fuck's sake. It's not like it's less prestigious. source: published poet who works as a software engineer.
- nilved 11y agoWhat is a poet?
- veddox 11y agoBeing both a hobby programmer and a hobby poet, I concur with the author: yes and no. There are some aspects to programming that have an aesthetic very similar to that of poetry. It is not in vain that we talk of "elegant" solutions to a problem, or say that [your favourite language] is "beautiful". So in that sense, yes, code can be a poem. However, there are other areas where the two are worlds apart. First and foremost their purpose: code is meant to cause action (on the part of a computer). Any beauty is a side effect. Poetry is meant to be beautiful, to evoke feelings. If the reading of a poem causes an action in a reader, that is usually a side effect. So in that sense, no, code is definitely not poetry :D
- jlg23 11y agoNo, but a well written program has the qualities of a good poem: You want to read it and it you can follow it easily. And every word is exactly where it belongs. I still remember with how much pleasure I read Edi Weitz' cl-ppcre - as a print-out, in bed. More than once I did minor changes to programs that I attributed to my OCD just to get positive feedback from peers that I made the program more readable (say, changing (let ((x ..)) (when x ....)) to (when-let ((x ...)) ....)).
- veddox 11y ago> a well written program has the qualities of a good poem: You want to read it and it you can follow it easily. Have you ever read a poem by T.S. Eliot? A brilliant poet with an incredible gift for language, but I've been reading his "The Four Quartets" repeatedly for over a year and still don't understand much of it... Good poetry is not necessarily readily understandable (and coming to think of it, neither is a good program). But once you have understood it you see that yes, "every word is exactly where it belongs".
- AUmrysh 11y agoPoetry is about painting images with words. Often poetry will do this by not saying what is actually happening or the thought it intends to create in the reader. A program is written to perform math, and it is generally considered bad to waste space with needless things. It doesn't aid the reader or the compiler or the execution to add unused variables. It's really bad in a program to do things in an unclear way. Poetry can have ambiguities, good software can't. They do both share some amount of necessity of context. Both often have abstraction. I would say poetry is kind of a playful use of language, whereas programming is really more of a clever use of math.
- joepvd 11y agoObserving that the two (wonderful!) recitations as of yet are affiliated with perl, I am wondering what's up with the rest...
- throwawayaway 11y agois up down?
- clock_tower 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- andyraskin 11y agoA nice recent counterexample (even though the question mark is in the subhead): http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/the-avenger http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/the-avenger
- mabbo 11y ago> Poetry is an art form that conveys not just meaning, but also emotion. You can’t express emotion through code. Oh, code doesn't just express emotion- it instigates it. Usually pure, infernos of anger at the damned bastard who wrote it.
- dang 11y agoMuch of this thread is a dismaying example of responding only to the title. Titles are the bikesheds of HN. This is an article about learning programming from Alan Perlis in 1983—a rich topic. "Is programming poetry?" was obviously not meant to be taken literally: the subtitle is "yes and no" and the text makes clear that Perlis was being provocative. The article deserves deeper attention than this. It's about learning programming from a master who used unconventional methods, and a first-hand report on what Perlis himself wrote about in http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/perlis77.htm http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/perlis77.htm.
- andyraskin 11y agoWow, thank you for that link. Never saw it before. Perlis really did deliver on his intention to give us a "pou sto to last the student for 40 years, not a handbook for tomorrow’s employment." Every time I've encountered a new language or framework (Java, Ruby, Rails, whatever), I've been grateful to him. He also delivered on his intention to keep us "on the computer early and often." I didn't get much sleep that semester -- now I see that was by design :)
- dang 11y agoThat's wonderful to hear. Thanks for the update. Edit: I had to look up pou sto. Turns out it's Archimedes' "place to stand" from which he could move the earth. In other words, the best possible foundation. A high aspiration for a programming language course.
- andyraskin 11y agoFull disclosure: I had to look up pou sto also. I guess there are still some downsides to not majoring in the classics.
- logicallee 11y agoso why not change the title? The title is a very clear question.
- dschiptsov 11y agoIt has very similar recursive process of clarification, refinement and simplification with the base case on what author thinks is 'perfection' (local optimum). map or filter procedures in Scheme or Haskell (written in terms of fold) are worth to be framed and posted on a wall.)
- theoh 11y agohttp://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/wcw-machine.html http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/wcw-machine.html William Carlos Williams On poems as machines made out of words "To make two bold statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character."
- dang 11y agoThat is brilliant.
- blt 11y ago> Think about the greatest, most beautiful cathedrals in Europe. Some of them took more than 500 years to build. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of the computer programs we will build over the next 500 years? Now that is inspirational. I've managed to spend my software development career mostly writing programs that I feel are meaningful and useful, and I'm very thankful for that. But nothing I've written is going to last more than 10 or 20 years. I would love to produce an artifact that lasts centuries some day. So far, discounting stuff that only lives because of some legacy hardware system, we've got maybe LINPACK and... what else?
- ssprang 11y agoHow about TeX?
- andyraskin 11y agoIn my opinion, it's fair to consider API-connected services — and maybe even the Web itself (which did not exist when Perlis first said this) — as "computer programs." In that sense, we're all building this cathedral together.
- iamcurious 11y agovim and emacs. they will live forever in infinite different reincarnations.
- veddox 11y agoInspirational, but to be honest, I highly doubt it. Software has an extremely short life cycle compared to stone... The only softwarily architected object I can think of that might come close to the endurance and grandeur of a medieval cathedral is the Internet - but even that is not half a century old yet.
- ClayFerguson 11y agoAs a developer of 25 years in all my experience code that looked sloppy was indeed crappy at other layers other than appearance as well. A great developer takes as much pride in every letter of his code as any poet ever does. Moreso. If we get it wrong, it doesn't work. If we do, however it ALWAYS does work right. Beautiful in that way.
- mark_lee 11y agoReally hard to answer because of the concept of poetry.Poessy?
- agumonkey 11y agoI thought it was painting. ps: among the APL examples from the article, I'd add most of the IOCCC submissions.
- dang 11y ago> among the APL examples from the article, I'd add most of the IOCCC submissions That can only be because you don't understand APL or its principle of condensed simplicity. This is one of those cases where the reflexive judgment is completely wrong. We're so used to code being sprawlingly complex that APL and its derivatives seem obviously perverse, when in fact they are lyrical, and the problem is with us and our 'obvious' preconceptions. If APL were a matter of intentional obfuscation you would never hear a student speak like this 30 years later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10481967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10481967.
- GlennS 11y agoImmediately made me think of: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/execution-in-kingd... For the lack of a nail, throw new HorseshoeNailNotFoundException("no nails!"); For the lack of a horseshoe, EquestrianDoctor.getLocalInstance().getHorseDispatcher().shoot(); For the lack of a horse, RidersGuild.getRiderNotificationSubscriberList().getBroadcaster().run( new BroadcastMessage(StableFactory.getNullHorseInstance())); For the lack of a rider, MessageDeliverySubsystem.getLogger().logDeliveryFailure( MessageFactory.getAbstractMessageInstance( new MessageMedium(MessageType.VERBAL), new MessageTransport(MessageTransportType.MOUNTED_RIDER), new MessageSessionDestination(BattleManager.getRoutingInfo( BattleLocation.NEAREST))), MessageFailureReasonCode.UNKNOWN_RIDER_FAILURE); For the lack of a message, ((BattleNotificationSender) BattleResourceMediator.getMediatorInstance().getResource( BattleParticipant.PROXY_PARTICIPANT, BattleResource.BATTLE_NOTIFICATION_SENDER)).sendNotification( ((BattleNotificationBuilder) (BattleResourceMediator.getMediatorInstance().getResource( BattleOrganizer.getBattleParticipant(Battle.Participant.GOOD_GUYS), BattleResource.BATTLE_NOTIFICATION_BUILDER))).buildNotification( BattleOrganizer.getBattleState(BattleResult.BATTLE_LOST), BattleManager.getChainOfCommand().getCommandChainNotifier())); For the lack of a battle, try { synchronized(BattleInformationRouterLock.getLockInstance()) { BattleInformationRouterLock.getLockInstance().wait(); } } catch (InterruptedException ix) { if (BattleSessionManager.getBattleStatus( BattleResource.getLocalizedBattleResource(Locale.getDefault()), BattleContext.createContext( Kingdom.getMasterBattleCoordinatorInstance( new TweedleBeetlePuddlePaddleBattle()).populate( RegionManager.getArmpitProvince(Armpit.LEFTMOST)))) == BattleStatus.LOST) { if (LOGGER.isLoggable(Level.TOTALLY_SCREWED)) { LOGGER.logScrewage(BattleLogger.createBattleLogMessage( BattleStatusFormatter.format(BattleStatus.LOST_WAR, Locale.getDefault()))); } } } For the lack of a war, new ServiceExecutionJoinPoint( DistributedQueryAnalyzer.forwardQueryResult( NotificationSchemaManager.getAbstractSchemaMapper( new PublishSubscribeNotificationSchema()).getSchemaProxy(). executePublishSubscribeQueryPlan( NotificationSchema.ALERT, new NotificationSchemaPriority(SchemaPriority.MAX_PRIORITY), new PublisherMessage(MessageFactory.getAbstractMessage( MessageType.WRITTEN, new MessageTransport(MessageTransportType.WOUNDED_SURVIVOR), new MessageSessionDestination( DestinationManager.getNullDestinationForQueryPlan()))), DistributedWarMachine.getPartyRoleManager().getRegisteredParties( PartyRoleManager.PARTY_KING || PartyRoleManager.PARTY_GENERAL || PartyRoleManager.PARTY_AMBASSADOR)).getQueryResult(), PriorityMessageDispatcher.getPriorityDispatchInstance())). waitForService(); All for the lack of a horseshoe nail.