An Aesthetics Reading List for Programmers

urbanhonking.com

24 pointsatduskgreg3 comments

I wonder what materials he read to come up with that beautiful pink aesthetic and unreadable title font?

Have been reading the recommended "On Beauty and Being Just" by Elaine Scarry. She argues that there is a continuum from physical beauty to mathematical symmetry and elegance to traffic laws to a representative democracy -- which is related to ancient Greek naval warfare, fwiw. It's vaguely utopian, in the sense that she seems to suggest that universal is enough, and the cranky shadows in the basement don't really enter the book. As a programmer into the aesthetics of code, I find this absolutist view sort of inspiring, though mucking around with steampunk Ruby makes me think that perhaps beauty and fun don't always share the same trireme...?

If you're evaluating Scarry's thought, before dismissing her as utopian (not that that's what you're doing) it's worth reading The Body in Pain as well which is about the grounding of political and other varieties of authority in the physical destruction of the body. It's a deep and serious book.

On Beauty, on the other hand, is definitely utopian. It's a poetic invocation of the power of beauty to connect us to the world. That's specifically why I thought it would be a good recommendation for programmers. As Scarry so eloquently outlines in this book, the ethical power of beauty specifically transforms aesthetics from something that's 'just a matter of subjective taste' to something core to the importance and meaning of what we do.

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