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Comment by Ansil849 | Hacker News Reader

Just an idle rumination...

It is curious to me how when a programmer does something beautiful and creative, it is (rightly) revered by other programmers, such as this example.

On the other hand, if someone who is not a programmer but is an artist or a writer, dabbles in programming, it is often met with derision and extreme nitpicking by programmers.

In other words, there seems to be a bit of a double-standard, where in one's own discipline one is able to appreciate creativity and art, but if someone else uses dabs of one's discipline in theirs, one can no longer see the artistic merit and can only fixate on the technical limitations.

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You're making a category error, the relationship is not symmetrical.

Comparing apples to apples, if the programmer dabbled in artmaking or writing, I'm confident they would get a similar reaction from accomplished artists or writers.

There are many, many, MANY examples of programmers attempting to write, and I'll stick a pin in this to say most of it is not good--if not truly bad--and in both disciplines the number of people who take the difference in expertise as an altruistic teaching opportunity are very few indeed.

Well, to be fair, there are many many many terrible examples of writers trying to write, as well. Sturgeon's Law says 95% of everything is crap. If one has the drive to write, they should try it. At worst, they've wasted some time, adding to the infinite pile of forgotten work. And at best, they might add something interesting to the world, with a different perspective than a writer's writer might bring.

Fwiw, this week I've been reading 'All Creatures Great and Small,' an autobiographical classic by a veterinary surgeon, and quite wonderfully written...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Herriot

And let's also remember that JM Coetzee, novel laureate in literature, began his career as a programmer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee

And Ted Chiang was a writer of software documentation, before becoming known for his sci fi stories.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang

> Comparing apples to apples, if the programmer dabbled in artmaking or writing, I'm confident they would get a similar reaction from accomplished artists or writers.

Yes, this is in-line with what I was, perhaps poorly, trying to articulate. The programmer dabbling in art may get a poor reaction from accomplished artists, much like the artist dabbling in programming may get a poor reaction from programmers.

But that same programmer who is dabbling in art may also get a good reaction from programmers, while that same artist dabbling in programming may also get a good reaction from other artists.

It's precisely that distinction between celebrating those who are in-discipline or in-group and deriding those are out out-discipline or in the out-group is what I am musing about.

It's not necessarily a tribal "in-group vs out-group" thing. If you're trying to impress programmers, you need to do good programming. If you're trying to impress artists, your need to do good art.

I believe this happens in most professions.

When an amateur announces they've created fine art and even dares put it up for auction at ridiculous prices, true artists complain. A lot.

When you architect a building, architects complain about all the things you did wrong. There's even a popular blog making fun of McMansions.

When you build a car in your garage, true car engineers will tell you it's dumb and you missed a whole bunch of important things.

But those are not the folks who are great at their craft. Those are the gatekeepers afraid of newcomers. The greats encourage new entrants because they know the pie can only get bigger.

This is a good point, but it is a bit different from the observation I was trying to make. What I am more observing is that if someone within your discipline uses elements of another discipline and brings it into yours, if it is done well, others who are in that discipline will appreciate it. Case in point: if a programmer incorporates poetry into their code.

On the other hand, if someone from another discipline uses your discipline as an element in theirs, those from whose discipline that element was taken from seem typically unable to appreciate the broader work of art, instead only fixating on how the materials from their discipline have not been used properly. Case in point: if for example a contemporary artist incorporates some programming in their art installation.

Yeah that’s what I was trying to say.

When a wizard from a different house uses your magic, you gotta defend your holy right and exclusivity.

When one of your wizards uses another’s magic, that’s fantastic! No threat to your tribe and might even make it better.

Yes, I like this. That's quite a fun way to get the point I was trying to make across indeed!

Here's a thought. If a poet were presented with this code-poetry, would they appreciate it as much as a coder?

That said, I'm a programmer who took digital media art installation courses in school and I didn't find it to be that different from programming, just with different results/goals. https://cycling74.com/products/max isn't a toy programming environment any more than https://www.ableton.com/en/ is a toy environment or https://origami.design/ is a toy environment. They just have different goals, and perhaps different standards of quality?

I don’t think so. It’s a form of constrained writing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing).

In such writing, the challenge is to construct beautiful texts despite of artificial constraints.

They wouldn’t understand the constraints, so they wouldn’t be able to understand why nicer texts wouldn’t satisfy them.

A lot of the magic of this post is that it runs and does cool things in addition to the dialogue. An artist incorporating programming into their art installation makes me think of what hackers often do in movies. It's a bunch of gibberish that's intended to look like code. Or technobabble in sci-fi shows, where it's intended to evoke science so smart the protagonist isn't supposed to understand it, but if you do know the field, you recognize it as gibberish. Or a physics t shirt someone buys you because "you're into science, right?" even though it's just a job to you and you're actually a biologist. Or maybe a tattoo of chinese characters that are beautifully drawn but are actually gibberish.

It's the difference between a thing and something intended to evoke that thing, which often comes off as a lazy caricature. If you can't see past the surface level, it evokes what is intended. If you can see past it, but you also see the intent, it's like a charade that falls apart. You know that if you were trying to evoke that same idea, you'd do it a different way that would still evoke the intended thing at the surface level, and additionally evoking the intended feeling in people who understand the subject matter being used.

In the case of OP, imagine if it were just poetry with indentation and parentheses and semicolons in places that make it look like code, maybe with some jquery mixed in with fortran and excel functions. If they mixed jquery with fortran and excel to juxtapose them or something, that's one thing. If they do it because "well that looks like code to me" it's another thing.

I think it really is a feeling similar to being lazily caricatured that drives people to criticize. It fails to evoke the thing the artist intends it to evoke to people who see below the surface.

(didn't mean to rant. you just got me thinking "out loud" and rambling)

Your comment reminds me of polyglot programming:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2467812/polyglot-progr...

https://ideology.com.au/polyglot/polyglot.txt

> if someone who is not a programmer but is an artist or a writer, dabbles in programming, it is often met with derision and extreme nitpicking by programmers

I've honestly never seen this happen and have no idea what kind of person would react this way.

>> if someone who is not a programmer but is an artist or a writer, dabbles in programming, it is often met with derision and extreme nitpicking by programmers

> I've honestly never seen this happen and have no idea what kind of person would react this way.

Take a look at some HN user responses to when the Google Will Eat Itself art project was posted here [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gwei.org

A couple choice examples of the kind of behavior I am talking about:

> I'm pretty sure it would be trivial to write a program that automatically generates modern "art" exhibit descriptions like this one.

> I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that this is a stupid idea - or the background

And so on...

You are correct but it happens in all fields/passions ...etc E.G. Jazz, you need to be a very good musician to create good jazz. A programmer could create something that creates jazz but jazz musicians will find it lacking, for want of a better word.

Got lost in a train of thought but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

Intent means a lot. I feel the Picasso quote fits here somewhat:

> It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child

So you could ask why Picassos stylized paintings are revered, but kindergarteners works are not

The sentiment I've heard in many disciplines, but often in art, is that you have to have the skills to follow the rules before you can break the rules in meaningful ways.

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