4 ms·

I'm kind of tired of the "programmer's take on craft that's been around for centuries longer than programming" genre. Writers have been using "pseudoprose" for

I'm kind of tired of the "programmer's take on craft that's been around for centuries longer than programming" genre. Writers have been using "pseudoprose" for eons, they are called "outlines" and "notes". Just like we don't necessarily need programming languages for recipes in the kitchen. What's up with programmers and their urge to ignore the rich history of any given subject only to fart out a piece on "here's how we could suck all the life and art out of X and make it just like programming!" No particular offense intended to the author. General ignorance of other art forms and desperate, half-baked, square-peg-in-round-hole attempts to understand everything in terms of programming is just a definite style of thinking that I find extremely frustrating, and it's not clear to me why programmers in particular seem to be so susceptible to such totalizing, reductive forms of thought. You don't see many writers going around writing pieces on "gerunds for code" and things like that. Jeez.

louislang 3y ago
People approach things through a lens of familiarity. Programmers are likely relating it to their experience.
keyle 3y ago
NIH syndrome, every day, twice on Sunday.
- adfm 3y ago
  Thank you! 100
beloch 3y ago
I see a couple things interacting here to promote this kind of post. 1. The bar is low to call yourself a programmer and have a programmer's blog. Maybe they have a university degree that required them to take courses in a variety of fields to become well rounded. Maybe they just went to a technical school and got good job experience. Maybe they just jumped into a programming job after dropping out of highschool. They might be very good programmers, but not knowledgeable about anything else and not particularly aware of it. 2. HNews has a lot of programmers in it's membership. Earth shaking stuff from a variety of diverse fields gets promoted because programmers have diverse interests, but they also tend to read a lot of other programmers' blogs and post them, even if they are somewhat less than earthshaking. Every news source has its weaknesses, and the tendency to see low-effort, poorly researched programmer blog posts promoted above genuinely interesting material is one of HNews's problems.
surprisetalk 3y ago
Author here! I'm 100% guilty of applying to "programmer's brain" to everything. You'd cringe if you saw the alt music notation I've been working on for the past decade. It's an ascii abomination. Seriously, it's got functions and everything is represented in base twelve. Anyway, I thought pseudoprose was worth sharing because of how LLMs might change the writing process itself. I've been experimenting with using GPT to expand ultra-condensed notes into essays. But I've found that I'm too obsessive over my writing voice to ever let it fill in gaps for me haha But even without LLMs, I still naturally gravitate to writing with pseudoprose. It's how I've taught myself to structure thoughts. But maybe thoughts don't need structure, and that's just my programmer's brain imposing order on the orderless :)
- caseyohara 3y ago
  Base 12 is awesome. I've worked extensively in Base 12 on some music-related hobby projects and it makes me resent humans for having 10 fingers, which probably lead to our Base 10/decimal reality. Base 12/the dozenal system is objectively superior in so many ways.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Funny thing about the fingers. There are twelve knuckles comprising the non-thumb fingers on one hand. I think that fact has actually influenced some civilizations to a base 12 number system but I can’t remember specifically which.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - bdsa 3y ago
      Wikipedia is also very vague (and I don't have access to the references) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Origin
- User23 3y ago
  > Seriously, it's got functions and everything is represented in base twelve. How is that weird? 12 semitones is pretty traditional and base 12 is generally convenient thanks to 12’s factors. If you want to be really self indulgent go for base 420 so you can evenly divide by 7.
wavemode 3y ago
Am I just reading this blog post completely differently? I don't see anything reductive about it...? It seems to me like a technique for taking some rough stream of consciousness and have ChatGPT generate a complete, fleshed out document from it. It's more than just "notes", it's a specific format and prompt. Whether it's of any use to you personally (I don't see myself using it, really) is a separate question. But I also don't quite follow what is offensive about it.
- gizajob 3y ago
  It's like the instructions for using ChatGPT to do the grunt work of constructing text, which not being a fan of prose or well-schooled in prose, the author equates with good prose, not realising that writing good prose, at length, is an art and a craft. Oops too many commas.
  - wavemode 3y ago
    I guess the part I'm missing, then, is where the author implies that the resulting document is "good prose". One could read such an implication into what's been written here, I suppose. But to me I read more that this technique is just about a producing something useful, not necessarily good (if by "good" we mean "equal in quality to what a skilled writer would have produced after many hours of deep thought"). Not every email we send needs to win a Pulitzer prize, after all.
cameronh90 3y ago
> What's up with programmers and their urge to ignore the rich history of any given subject Isn’t that just what science, mathematics and rationalism in general has always done? Traditional cuisine to food science, farming to agricultural science, religion to physics etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and big advances occasionally come from an outside perspective exploring a field. If a writer came up with a new idea for writing code, I think many people on this site would give it a fair crack of the whip, especially given the history of cross-pollination between linguistics and programming. I’m more disturbed by your need to rip someone’s work apart for no reason other than it doesn’t line up with your personal philosophy of how writers ought to work. You’ve not graced us with any constructive criticism, just an angry manifesto for why the author is wrong to publish his idea. I put it to you that if you don’t find this idea personally useful, and have nothing useful to add, maybe it’s not aimed at you and you can just skip over to the next article.
cabirum 3y ago
"Since I am good at X (coding in this case), my opinion is valuable in all subject matter (no)." The same goes for movie stars and musicians making statements about politics or tech.
stavros 3y ago
Hmm, I'm not sure why I should be condemning this. The author didn't shit on any pre-existing technology, they just said "I made a thing". As long as the thing isn't, like, the atom bomb or something, I can only celebrate it.
- mortehu 3y ago
  I think your parent took the first half of the page at face value, rather then treating it as an example of a useful type of prompt.
SrslyJosh 3y ago
"Become a better writer by learning a conlang" (particularly one that is vague by design) is probably the most HN writing advice ever.
block_dagger 3y ago
The tools have changed drastically even if the craftsperson has not. The craft adapts, evolves.
shunyaekam 3y ago
This comes across as judgemental and elitist. If you want finer content as determined by some group of gatekeepers of your choice, maybe you shouldn't read random blogs. (I enjoy programming metaphors like the OP as well. URL on my profile.)
petercooper 3y ago
I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise, but I don't really get this take. It feels like when people started to dabble with electronic music and were told it wasn't "real." The OP creating this idea doesn't take writing away from anyone else, and artistic, whimsical people rocking up into the programming world and introducing more creative ideas into that sphere doesn't take away from the rest of us either – it just makes everything bigger and richer.
camdenlock 3y ago
Apparently I’m the only one here who agrees with you. The author may be a high IQ genius, but this creation is incredibly grating, in that particular mode of an overenthusiastic mega-autist who sets out to dissect and systematize every last part of the universe. Unnerving to say the least.

louislang 3y ago

People approach things through a lens of familiarity. Programmers are likely relating it to their experience.

keyle 3y ago

NIH syndrome, every day, twice on Sunday.

adfm 3y ago
Thank you! 100

beloch 3y ago

I see a couple things interacting here to promote this kind of post. 1. The bar is low to call yourself a programmer and have a programmer's blog. Maybe they have a university degree that required them to take courses in a variety of fields to become well rounded. Maybe they just went to a technical school and got good job experience. Maybe they just jumped into a programming job after dropping out of highschool. They might be very good programmers, but not knowledgeable about anything else and not particularly aware of it. 2. HNews has a lot of programmers in it's membership. Earth shaking stuff from a variety of diverse fields gets promoted because programmers have diverse interests, but they also tend to read a lot of other programmers' blogs and post them, even if they are somewhat less than earthshaking. Every news source has its weaknesses, and the tendency to see low-effort, poorly researched programmer blog posts promoted above genuinely interesting material is one of HNews's problems.

surprisetalk 3y ago

Author here! I'm 100% guilty of applying to "programmer's brain" to everything. You'd cringe if you saw the alt music notation I've been working on for the past decade. It's an ascii abomination. Seriously, it's got functions and everything is represented in base twelve. Anyway, I thought pseudoprose was worth sharing because of how LLMs might change the writing process itself. I've been experimenting with using GPT to expand ultra-condensed notes into essays. But I've found that I'm too obsessive over my writing voice to ever let it fill in gaps for me haha But even without LLMs, I still naturally gravitate to writing with pseudoprose. It's how I've taught myself to structure thoughts. But maybe thoughts don't need structure, and that's just my programmer's brain imposing order on the orderless :)

caseyohara 3y ago
Base 12 is awesome. I've worked extensively in Base 12 on some music-related hobby projects and it makes me resent humans for having 10 fingers, which probably lead to our Base 10/decimal reality. Base 12/the dozenal system is objectively superior in so many ways.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  Funny thing about the fingers. There are twelve knuckles comprising the non-thumb fingers on one hand. I think that fact has actually influenced some civilizations to a base 12 number system but I can’t remember specifically which.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bdsa 3y ago
    Wikipedia is also very vague (and I don't have access to the references) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Origin
User23 3y ago
> Seriously, it's got functions and everything is represented in base twelve. How is that weird? 12 semitones is pretty traditional and base 12 is generally convenient thanks to 12’s factors. If you want to be really self indulgent go for base 420 so you can evenly divide by 7.

wavemode 3y ago

Am I just reading this blog post completely differently? I don't see anything reductive about it...? It seems to me like a technique for taking some rough stream of consciousness and have ChatGPT generate a complete, fleshed out document from it. It's more than just "notes", it's a specific format and prompt. Whether it's of any use to you personally (I don't see myself using it, really) is a separate question. But I also don't quite follow what is offensive about it.

gizajob 3y ago
It's like the instructions for using ChatGPT to do the grunt work of constructing text, which not being a fan of prose or well-schooled in prose, the author equates with good prose, not realising that writing good prose, at length, is an art and a craft. Oops too many commas.
- wavemode 3y ago
  I guess the part I'm missing, then, is where the author implies that the resulting document is "good prose". One could read such an implication into what's been written here, I suppose. But to me I read more that this technique is just about a producing something useful, not necessarily good (if by "good" we mean "equal in quality to what a skilled writer would have produced after many hours of deep thought"). Not every email we send needs to win a Pulitzer prize, after all.

cameronh90 3y ago

> What's up with programmers and their urge to ignore the rich history of any given subject Isn’t that just what science, mathematics and rationalism in general has always done? Traditional cuisine to food science, farming to agricultural science, religion to physics etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and big advances occasionally come from an outside perspective exploring a field. If a writer came up with a new idea for writing code, I think many people on this site would give it a fair crack of the whip, especially given the history of cross-pollination between linguistics and programming. I’m more disturbed by your need to rip someone’s work apart for no reason other than it doesn’t line up with your personal philosophy of how writers ought to work. You’ve not graced us with any constructive criticism, just an angry manifesto for why the author is wrong to publish his idea. I put it to you that if you don’t find this idea personally useful, and have nothing useful to add, maybe it’s not aimed at you and you can just skip over to the next article.

cabirum 3y ago

"Since I am good at X (coding in this case), my opinion is valuable in all subject matter (no)." The same goes for movie stars and musicians making statements about politics or tech.

stavros 3y ago

Hmm, I'm not sure why I should be condemning this. The author didn't shit on any pre-existing technology, they just said "I made a thing". As long as the thing isn't, like, the atom bomb or something, I can only celebrate it.

mortehu 3y ago
I think your parent took the first half of the page at face value, rather then treating it as an example of a useful type of prompt.

SrslyJosh 3y ago

"Become a better writer by learning a conlang" (particularly one that is vague by design) is probably the most HN writing advice ever.

block_dagger 3y ago

The tools have changed drastically even if the craftsperson has not. The craft adapts, evolves.

shunyaekam 3y ago

This comes across as judgemental and elitist. If you want finer content as determined by some group of gatekeepers of your choice, maybe you shouldn't read random blogs. (I enjoy programming metaphors like the OP as well. URL on my profile.)

petercooper 3y ago

I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise, but I don't really get this take. It feels like when people started to dabble with electronic music and were told it wasn't "real." The OP creating this idea doesn't take writing away from anyone else, and artistic, whimsical people rocking up into the programming world and introducing more creative ideas into that sphere doesn't take away from the rest of us either – it just makes everything bigger and richer.

camdenlock 3y ago

Apparently I’m the only one here who agrees with you. The author may be a high IQ genius, but this creation is incredibly grating, in that particular mode of an overenthusiastic mega-autist who sets out to dissect and systematize every last part of the universe. Unnerving to say the least.