5 ms·

Well said. Your point leads me (once again) to wonder. Is programming, or some specific aspect of it, fundamentally a creative practice?

gabereiser 4y ago
Anything can be a creative practice once you learn that the rules that constrained it can be bent. Obviously there are areas where creativity will lead to massive explosions (which is how we know!) but programming, computers, art, hell even sitting in a toll booth can be creative endeavors. (Shout out to the fun folks working the booths at Universal Studios Orlando!)
- caprock 4y ago
  That's an interesting perspective. It's been clear to me that creativity often arises from constraints, but I'd not really flipped the concept around like that before. Thank you for sharing!
michaelbrave 4y ago
I mean programming is more or less understanding a thing well enough to tell the machine how to go through the steps of it. I've always thought of it in a similar vein to the problem solving we use in design. So if we think of design or writing as creative, yes I think programming is too.
deleted 4y ago
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dahart 4y ago
I think so. Here are several possibly unrelated takes that are my own opinion: one is that a “creative practice” at it’s most basic is simply creating something, and in that sense programming is absolutely creative. It need not be mysterious or artistic or particularly unique or personal, it can be seen as creative if it’s nothing more than new. Another is that I practice digital art on my own, separate from my day job, and the process of making procedural art using a computer is similar in many ways to making art using traditional techniques, I absolutely view programming imagery as creative programming. A third view is that good programming is an art, not a science. We always have lots of options and it can be hard to choose; the people who are best at it are the ones who spend time designing and crafting and worrying about function and form. Deciding on the architecture is usually about balancing goals and understanding your audience. Tuning the performance of code is done best when finding out and thinking about how people perceive it while they use it. I do personally think of writing good code as an artistic process, conceptually similar to my own workflows for writing stories or painting pictures. The tools are different but the ideas are often the same.
dimal 4y ago
Absolutely. You start with nothing then you write magical words that DO things.

gabereiser 4y ago

Anything can be a creative practice once you learn that the rules that constrained it can be bent. Obviously there are areas where creativity will lead to massive explosions (which is how we know!) but programming, computers, art, hell even sitting in a toll booth can be creative endeavors. (Shout out to the fun folks working the booths at Universal Studios Orlando!)

caprock 4y ago
That's an interesting perspective. It's been clear to me that creativity often arises from constraints, but I'd not really flipped the concept around like that before. Thank you for sharing!

michaelbrave 4y ago

I mean programming is more or less understanding a thing well enough to tell the machine how to go through the steps of it. I've always thought of it in a similar vein to the problem solving we use in design. So if we think of design or writing as creative, yes I think programming is too.

deleted 4y ago

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dahart 4y ago

I think so. Here are several possibly unrelated takes that are my own opinion: one is that a “creative practice” at it’s most basic is simply creating something, and in that sense programming is absolutely creative. It need not be mysterious or artistic or particularly unique or personal, it can be seen as creative if it’s nothing more than new. Another is that I practice digital art on my own, separate from my day job, and the process of making procedural art using a computer is similar in many ways to making art using traditional techniques, I absolutely view programming imagery as creative programming. A third view is that good programming is an art, not a science. We always have lots of options and it can be hard to choose; the people who are best at it are the ones who spend time designing and crafting and worrying about function and form. Deciding on the architecture is usually about balancing goals and understanding your audience. Tuning the performance of code is done best when finding out and thinking about how people perceive it while they use it. I do personally think of writing good code as an artistic process, conceptually similar to my own workflows for writing stories or painting pictures. The tools are different but the ideas are often the same.

dimal 4y ago

Absolutely. You start with nothing then you write magical words that DO things.