4 ms·

That's exactly as saying that someone made a full c++ program using nothing but notepad and therefore it's impressive. All I see its someone that made their liv

That's exactly as saying that someone made a full c++ program using nothing but notepad and therefore it's impressive. All I see its someone that made their lives more difficult by purpose.

vanderZwan 9y ago
I think you fail to appreciate that learning a new skill requires some kind of connection to an already learned skill, and that this connection becomes harder to establish at old age. The old lady's choice may have made perfect sense from her point of view.
- mattigames 9y ago
  Pretty sure whatever she knew already (e.g. oil painting) at least had anti-aliasing; what I mean is that there are tools that are even simpler than MS-paint but produce better results ("better" as in art more likely to be liked by more people)
Xyzodiac 9y ago
Really not the same thing. You could produce the same C++ program in Notepad that you could in any other editor or IDE. Here the artist is working with restricted tools in a way that the restriction becomes part of the work itself
- mattigames 9y ago
  Not really, there are a few people in the world that CAN create an image pixel by pixel using MS paint and make it look like a photo (the top people on hyper-realism) and get the very same result they would get using Photoshop, just taking tons of more time. And even if the "restricted tools" do make a difference we are splitting hairs here, because we can create a similar equivalence, e.g. a c++ program with artificial restrictions: A program where you can't use your own classes or structs, or a program that can't be bigger than 1KB, and so on.
  - digaozao 9y ago
    As an intern in a Google training program in Brazil, they gave us the project to make a crawler, without any c++ libs other than curl. It was difficult, but we really learned a lot.
steamer25 9y ago
I remember some documentary with Jack White talking about how he tries to make music composition more difficult on purpose. I had a very similar reaction to yours--the example they played under his voice over wasn't very impressive to me and I'm not much of a Jack White fan to begin with. Now that I'm writing this, I suppose one useful concept is that of constraints promoting creativity by forcing you to come at the blank canvas from a different mindset than you're used to. I suppose there are some times to struggle and grow but other times, like a competitive swimmer shedding his 'drags', to engage our full unhindered capacity free of such artificial handicaps. Another musical example for me is the band Amaranthe. They usually make extensive use of modern production techniques but their talent is also very evident when they're unplugged: https://www.youtube.com/embed/J4Jhpx2Qmz4?start=61&end=290 https://www.youtube.com/embed/J4Jhpx2Qmz4?start=61&end=290 Music video for the same song: https://youtu.be/D8lV1To-_fU https://youtu.be/D8lV1To-_fU
- Pamar 9y ago
  Regarding the “making composition difficult on purpose” I suggest the book “Trust the process: an artist’s guide to letting go” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1570623570 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1570623570) which has lots of interesting material on how to stimulate creativity, and explicit advice about how to use the limitations you have as stepping stones to move forward instead of like constraints that impede your progress.
zz32asdf 9y ago
Take a minimalist tool and adapt yourself to the tool to make something unique and great. Or just take it off the shelf and run a recipe off the web. No wonder America is dying. No one knows how to do anything unique. "Look how quickly I drew Spider-Man in Photoshop following this guide!" Genius
a888 9y ago
Creativity = Originality / Tools used
memco 9y ago
I think I learned the ins and outs of coding a lot better by doing it by hand. Perhaps it helps reinforce and understand what you're doing. But, I see it being the same as being forced to do your math exams without a calculator in school: almost no one works that way, but if you can work that way, then when you use the calculator you become much more effective. It's more of a learning or training exercise so that when you are doing other things, you have a foundation to build on.

That's exactly as saying that someone made a full c++ program using nothing but notepad and therefore it's impressive. All I see its someone that made their lives more difficult by purpose.

vanderZwan 9y ago

I think you fail to appreciate that learning a new skill requires some kind of connection to an already learned skill, and that this connection becomes harder to establish at old age. The old lady's choice may have made perfect sense from her point of view.

mattigames 9y ago
Pretty sure whatever she knew already (e.g. oil painting) at least had anti-aliasing; what I mean is that there are tools that are even simpler than MS-paint but produce better results ("better" as in art more likely to be liked by more people)

Xyzodiac 9y ago

Really not the same thing. You could produce the same C++ program in Notepad that you could in any other editor or IDE. Here the artist is working with restricted tools in a way that the restriction becomes part of the work itself

mattigames 9y ago
Not really, there are a few people in the world that CAN create an image pixel by pixel using MS paint and make it look like a photo (the top people on hyper-realism) and get the very same result they would get using Photoshop, just taking tons of more time. And even if the "restricted tools" do make a difference we are splitting hairs here, because we can create a similar equivalence, e.g. a c++ program with artificial restrictions: A program where you can't use your own classes or structs, or a program that can't be bigger than 1KB, and so on.
- digaozao 9y ago
  As an intern in a Google training program in Brazil, they gave us the project to make a crawler, without any c++ libs other than curl. It was difficult, but we really learned a lot.

steamer25 9y ago

I remember some documentary with Jack White talking about how he tries to make music composition more difficult on purpose. I had a very similar reaction to yours--the example they played under his voice over wasn't very impressive to me and I'm not much of a Jack White fan to begin with. Now that I'm writing this, I suppose one useful concept is that of constraints promoting creativity by forcing you to come at the blank canvas from a different mindset than you're used to. I suppose there are some times to struggle and grow but other times, like a competitive swimmer shedding his 'drags', to engage our full unhindered capacity free of such artificial handicaps. Another musical example for me is the band Amaranthe. They usually make extensive use of modern production techniques but their talent is also very evident when they're unplugged: https://www.youtube.com/embed/J4Jhpx2Qmz4?start=61&end=290 https://www.youtube.com/embed/J4Jhpx2Qmz4?start=61&end=290 Music video for the same song: https://youtu.be/D8lV1To-_fU https://youtu.be/D8lV1To-_fU

Pamar 9y ago
Regarding the “making composition difficult on purpose” I suggest the book “Trust the process: an artist’s guide to letting go” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1570623570 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1570623570) which has lots of interesting material on how to stimulate creativity, and explicit advice about how to use the limitations you have as stepping stones to move forward instead of like constraints that impede your progress.

zz32asdf 9y ago

Take a minimalist tool and adapt yourself to the tool to make something unique and great. Or just take it off the shelf and run a recipe off the web. No wonder America is dying. No one knows how to do anything unique. "Look how quickly I drew Spider-Man in Photoshop following this guide!" Genius

a888 9y ago

Creativity = Originality / Tools used

memco 9y ago

I think I learned the ins and outs of coding a lot better by doing it by hand. Perhaps it helps reinforce and understand what you're doing. But, I see it being the same as being forced to do your math exams without a calculator in school: almost no one works that way, but if you can work that way, then when you use the calculator you become much more effective. It's more of a learning or training exercise so that when you are doing other things, you have a foundation to build on.