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> Eyles and some of his fellow Consciousness IIIers regard computer programming as a fine craft that might some day be elevated to the status of an art. “It’s p

> Eyles and some of his fellow Consciousness IIIers regard computer programming as a fine craft that might some day be elevated to the status of an art. “It’s possible to envision a time when there are professors of the literature of computer programming. Maybe some programmers will be minor poets of the 20th Century. The trouble is that programs are written in a language there’s no audience for. It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s sort of discouraging.” As I read this, I was aware that there is a steaming pile of JavaScript a single Alt-Tab away on my laptop. I think there's a profound lesson here - buried in the path between these dreams of programmers in the 70s and today's reality. This was a really good read. Gave me something to think about.

Piskvorrr 7y ago
Tbh, for any piece of great poetry or prose or code, there are nine others which are crap, as noted by Sturgeon's Law. The steaming piles of yesterday have been forgotten, with only the memorable works remaining; thus creating an illusion of a Golden Age.
lordleft 7y ago
>It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s sort of discouraging. As a programmer who loves Russian lit, this hit close to home. It's a dream of mine to one day read Tolstoy's drafts of his predecessor novel to War & Peace ("The Decembrists"), but my professor informed me that the copies that exist are entirely in russian. One day.
kragen 7y ago
The 19th century contained writing like the writing of Gogol. It also contained writing such as dunning notices, calling cards, semi-literate love notes, graffiti, army regulations, and shopping lists. The literary quality of most of the latter may have been deplorable, but it certainly does not detract from the merit of the former.
afarrell 7y ago
> a steaming pile of JavaScript a single Alt-Tab away on my laptop Most of the poetry written in Shakespere's time has been lost to history because it was utter drivel. Some is still scratched on 400-year-old walls.
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  And note that some of the works by Shak. rarely see a performance, surviving merely by being bundled in the 5 MB (!) set of Complete Works.
SonOfLilit 7y ago
Whytheluckystiff wrote some Ruby code that can only be described as good poetry (including at least one project used in production in some places, the Camping web framework) circa 2005. I'm sure some people write poetry-level code today (obviously the folks at shadertoy.com, but they're writing in a classical style, and I'm sure someone's writing code poetry that could not have been written before 2020).
- markdown 7y ago
  > Whytheluckystiff Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Is that the guy who ragequit and deleted all his tutorials/guides?
  - SonOfLilit 7y ago
    As far as I understand, he quit his public life when someone hunted down and published his real name and address. He removed his website and github, which contained his various writings, some of which had names with "tutorial" or "guide" in them but all of which were at least 80% works of literature and at most 20% works of technical documentation. Not sure I would call it "ragequitting". Virtually all his works were archived by fans and can be read for example here: https://viewsourcecode.org/why/ https://viewsourcecode.org/why/ A few years ago he published a sort of absurdist goodbye (as a live-updating printer spool) which Steve Klabnik collected into a 95-page PDF here: https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE His blog contained many small snippets of code that were definitely meant to be consumed as poetry, they are easy to spot because of all the colors and shapes and sometimes animations: https://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/ https://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/ But my own experience of learning from him how to experience code as poetry mostly involved around using Camping in production for some small side projects and needing to explore some bits of its code because of practical reasons: https://github.com/camping/camping https://github.com/camping/camping
    - Itaxpica 7y ago
      Closure, the printer spool “book” in question, is one of the best works on the philosophy of software engineering and life on the modern internet ever written.

Piskvorrr 7y ago

Tbh, for any piece of great poetry or prose or code, there are nine others which are crap, as noted by Sturgeon's Law. The steaming piles of yesterday have been forgotten, with only the memorable works remaining; thus creating an illusion of a Golden Age.

lordleft 7y ago

>It’s like Nabokov’s book about Gogol where at the end he says that if you really want to know anything about Gogol, there’s no way around it, you gotta learn Russian. It’s sort of discouraging. As a programmer who loves Russian lit, this hit close to home. It's a dream of mine to one day read Tolstoy's drafts of his predecessor novel to War & Peace ("The Decembrists"), but my professor informed me that the copies that exist are entirely in russian. One day.

kragen 7y ago

The 19th century contained writing like the writing of Gogol. It also contained writing such as dunning notices, calling cards, semi-literate love notes, graffiti, army regulations, and shopping lists. The literary quality of most of the latter may have been deplorable, but it certainly does not detract from the merit of the former.

afarrell 7y ago

> a steaming pile of JavaScript a single Alt-Tab away on my laptop Most of the poetry written in Shakespere's time has been lost to history because it was utter drivel. Some is still scratched on 400-year-old walls.

Piskvorrr 7y ago
And note that some of the works by Shak. rarely see a performance, surviving merely by being bundled in the 5 MB (!) set of Complete Works.

SonOfLilit 7y ago

Whytheluckystiff wrote some Ruby code that can only be described as good poetry (including at least one project used in production in some places, the Camping web framework) circa 2005. I'm sure some people write poetry-level code today (obviously the folks at shadertoy.com, but they're writing in a classical style, and I'm sure someone's writing code poetry that could not have been written before 2020).

markdown 7y ago
> Whytheluckystiff Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Is that the guy who ragequit and deleted all his tutorials/guides?
- SonOfLilit 7y ago
  As far as I understand, he quit his public life when someone hunted down and published his real name and address. He removed his website and github, which contained his various writings, some of which had names with "tutorial" or "guide" in them but all of which were at least 80% works of literature and at most 20% works of technical documentation. Not sure I would call it "ragequitting". Virtually all his works were archived by fans and can be read for example here: https://viewsourcecode.org/why/ https://viewsourcecode.org/why/ A few years ago he published a sort of absurdist goodbye (as a live-updating printer spool) which Steve Klabnik collected into a 95-page PDF here: https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE https://github.com/steveklabnik/CLOSURE His blog contained many small snippets of code that were definitely meant to be consumed as poetry, they are easy to spot because of all the colors and shapes and sometimes animations: https://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/ https://viewsourcecode.org/why/redhanded/ But my own experience of learning from him how to experience code as poetry mostly involved around using Camping in production for some small side projects and needing to explore some bits of its code because of practical reasons: https://github.com/camping/camping https://github.com/camping/camping
  - Itaxpica 7y ago
    Closure, the printer spool “book” in question, is one of the best works on the philosophy of software engineering and life on the modern internet ever written.