Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Programming is Art Paul Graham has an essay called ‘Hackers and Painters’ in which he draws a solid connection between creating software and making ‘art’.  He goes as far as saying that the two are really the same discipline with different mediums: “What hackers and painters have in common is that they’re both makers.  Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things.” I’ve read the essay a few times and was reminded of it by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Pirsig describes the same relationship but is more penetrable than Graham in the sense that he widens his connection to all craftsmanship, not just programming.  He does so in the form of a dialogue with a friend and former colleague who teaches art at a University: “Sometime look at the novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you’ll see the difference.  The craftsman isn’t ever following a single line of instruction.  He’s making decisions as he goes along.  For that reason he’ll be absorbed and attentive to what he’s doing even though he doesn’t deliberately contrive this.  His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony.  He isn’t following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand.  The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind is at rest at the same time the material’s right.” “Sounds like art… ” “Well, it is art…this divorce of art from technology is completely unnatural.  It’s just that it’s gone on so long you have to be an archeologist to find out where the two separated.” posted in [home], [books] 10:00:07 PM    comment [] Zen, Motorcycle Maintenance I haven’t blogged it just yet but I’ve been making my way through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.  A large part of this is that I haven’t yet locked down the main thread of the book other than its scattered touch on philosophy, values and technology. There’s also the not so insignificant fact that I’ve not decided whether I like Pirsig at all – a fact that really doesn’t impact my reading of his work but more a question of whether he’s a blowhard or a self assured sage. In the beginning of the book he continually speaks of a Phaedrus, some individual of the past who attempted to redefine rationality.  You may start thinking of a Greek rhetorician but your anticlimax comes shortly before the point I’ve reached: the Phaedrus to whom Pirsig refers1 is himself – a younger Pirsig who spent some years trying to find himself from a youthful (and “brilliant”, he attempt to subtly suggest) interest in science, enlisting in the military, spending what I’ll guess is a decade studying philosophy and finally having a meltdown teaching and playing University politics at the University of Montana (?).  My freshman year of college my roommate introduced himself as “Paithen” – Hebrew for poet he informed me – and set a standard for being a blowhard and choking too much on oneself.  Taking ancient names for oneself is a bad way to start things off, this I learned from the interaction. I’ve read authors that take themselves really seriously though and were it that this was the only vice Pirsig carries through the book.  A greater annoyance is the summary judgments Pirsig makes of his friends consistently through the book.  He begins, in fact, by calling his friends irrational and chiding them on a lack of affinity towards maintenance.  It’s not just the friends he travels with, it’s his former colleague the art professor or it’s his former employer at the University.  The only individual, it seems, escaping unapologetic criticism here is (no surprise here) Pirsig. But every time it’s becoming a bit tiresome Pirsig produces something that is well meditated and valuable.  It keeps eking me on and removes my distaste for what seems like condescension and a self righteous attitude.  The jury is out, I’m not finished, but thought I’d share. I’ll quote Pirsig, but perhaps I’ll use a different post for it so that it doesn’t stand with my own criticisms of the book. posted in [home], [books] 1In the most obvious sense, perhaps there is a parallel that escapes me. 7:38:21 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 David Seruyange. Last update: 5/23/2006; 8:32:22 PM.