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While I think it is great that we can now do things with ease without having to worry about all the details, I also think it limits us when doing things. This i

by zxcdw 14y ago

While I think it is great that we can now do things with ease without having to worry about all the details, I also think it limits us when doing things. This is not a problem in entreprise/commercial software development because it gives more control for the manages over the developers and the development process, thus reducing complexity of the process. However, this is a problem for us who are driven by curiosity and the joy of creative problem solving. Demoscene[1] is a good example of this. Back in the day when people wanted to create great looking audiovisual works of art, they had to program them for the computer. There were no movie/3D/CGI editors to do the job with. The whole scene revolved around the technical limitations and beating them. People formed groups which competed against others by creating ever-more stunning effects with more and more content on the screen. Now, new people wonder why do people bother doing the art by programming some obscure old machine? Sure it would be easier to use Sony Vegas for visuals and FL Studio for audio? But hese people miss the point. Some people are not driven to play with these things in order to create art. They are driven by their desire to do creative problem solving. These days the scene has lost it's appeal in public because there's nothing special in stunning graphics on screen. And very few people really care about the fact that some of the works are created within very tight technical constraints[2][3]. All this is gone and "dead" though. Not only demoscene, but the spirit of ceative problem solving within technical constraints. This is the problem I have. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWcbj7ksqwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWcbj7ksqwE [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DjBq2O0XXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DjBq2O0XXk

dasil003 14y ago
People are still pushing the boundaries in every direction, it's just not as easy to see in one place, and not as amazing because we are desensitized to it. I mean we'll never be amazed again the way we were by Doom when it first came out, but don't tell John Carmack he's not trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance from today's hardware.
- zxcdw 14y ago
  People are always pushing the boundaries somewhere. These days there's much less space for it though. Another interesting domain in which creative problem solving rules the game is computer security. But it too is going away once we move away from C and C++ based infrastructure.
  - rjknight 14y ago
    Before computers, people had to figure out incredibly inventive ways of producing sound and video effects in music and movies. Just consider what it took to create some of the great audiovisual works of the pre-1980s! But computers came along and ruined all of that by making it easier, replacing the interface to the microphone or the camera with a computer. This has always happened, it will always continue to happen, but the creativity will move elsewhere. It won't be too long before people are lamenting the loss of computer programming almost entirely, but by then the creative people will have moved on to, say, synthetic biology or some new system that can be 'hacked'.

by zxcdw 14y ago

dasil003 14y ago

People are still pushing the boundaries in every direction, it's just not as easy to see in one place, and not as amazing because we are desensitized to it. I mean we'll never be amazed again the way we were by Doom when it first came out, but don't tell John Carmack he's not trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance from today's hardware.

zxcdw 14y ago
People are always pushing the boundaries somewhere. These days there's much less space for it though. Another interesting domain in which creative problem solving rules the game is computer security. But it too is going away once we move away from C and C++ based infrastructure.
- rjknight 14y ago
  Before computers, people had to figure out incredibly inventive ways of producing sound and video effects in music and movies. Just consider what it took to create some of the great audiovisual works of the pre-1980s! But computers came along and ruined all of that by making it easier, replacing the interface to the microphone or the camera with a computer. This has always happened, it will always continue to happen, but the creativity will move elsewhere. It won't be too long before people are lamenting the loss of computer programming almost entirely, but by then the creative people will have moved on to, say, synthetic biology or some new system that can be 'hacked'.