[NetBehaviour] Code Is Not Literature

Sun Jan 26 18:05:28 CET 2014

it would strengthen the fact that modern art in a sense has little 
straight-forward use value but great value as exchange; it's a discursive 
formation and doesn't really exist without that habitus - which is also 
what makes it fascinating and exciting -

On Fri, 24 Jan 2014, James wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pall Thayer <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> And, as a reply to Seibel's comments, do we not "decode" literature? I've
> always felt a deep divide between people who have a background in
> programming/engineering/tech stuff who have moved into creative realms
> ("Art") and those who have a background in the arts but have moved towards
> programming/engineering ("tech"). It feels to me that the tech-background
> people have a harder time seeing programming as "art". To them, the product
> might be art, but not the process. They tend to be the ones to raise the
> question, "is the paint brush the art?" It all depends on how you approach
> it. The "paint brush" can, in fact, be the art.
> 
> I have a hard time with this paint brush bring art. I mean I could go to the
> ?1shop and get a pack of three brushes with the bristles falling out and call
> it art, but what would be the point? it would only strengthen the feeling
> that modern art is pretentious b.s.. its probably difficult for anyone who
> isn't immersed in the aartt world in some way on a daily basis. probably
> only makes sense or has any meaning if you are, certainly meaningless to me.
> a paint brush from the pound shop as art, that is, well I struggle with most
> art as art actually these days.
> 
> On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 8:11 PM, Pall Thayer <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>       Hi Alan, I think you make an excellent point here. "Who is
>       looking at the code and for what purposes?" The only thing that
>       differentiates programming code from other written text is its
>       perceived purpose and people's reasons for reading the text. If,
>       in reading, you look for prose, you will find it. If you don't,
>       you won't. Likewise, if you look at an image, seeking art, you
>       will find it. If you're looking for something else, you won't
>       find the art.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
> wrote:
> 
>
>       Well, there are a number of issues here. In the first
>       place, they're looking at code for particular reasons, to
>       understand it in particular ways; code as literature or as
>       part-objects within literature (codework) is not meant to
>       be decoded the same way. Think of counting the number of
>       "t"s for example in a poem - that's also a way of decoding
>       it, but is of course different than literary reading. I
>       think there's a hermeneutics involved here, as well as the
>       Wittgensteinian idea of "family of usages" - so who is
>       looking at the code/codework, for what purpose, and so
>       forth? It's problematic; since code is primarily
>       originating with programmers, they're interested in its
>       functionality, taking it apart, but that's not it's only
>       function, certainly not within the aegis of literature. An
>       interesting aside to this of course is reading a
>       mathematical text, which I think _can_ be a work of
>       literature fairly directly - for example Einstein's theory
>       of relativity. One's reading speeds and slows, and the
>       formulas require decoding as well, but of a different
>       sort, I think; I also feel that, say, cosmological
>       formulas are denser and more layered, more difficult to
>       unravel perhaps, than most programming code - but I may
>       well be mistaken here (and should take this whole sentence
>       back!).
>
>       - Alan
>
>       On Thu, 23 Jan 2014, marc garrett wrote:
>
>       Code Is Not Literature - or is it?
> 
> I was browsing Slashdot as one does and found a link to an
> article called ?Code Is Not Literature?.
> 
> As I was reading this I was thinking of Mez and Alan
> Sondheim, and thought to myself - surely, if someone turns
> it into literature, then it is literature?
> 
> Anyway, have a read and see what you think?
> 
> "Hacker and author Peter Seibel has done a lot of work to
> adopt one of the most widely-accepted practices toward
> becoming a better programmer: reading high quality code.
> He's set up code-reading groups and interviewed other
> programmers to see what code they read. But he's come to
> learn that the overwhelming majority of programmers don't
> practice what they preach. Why? He says, 'We don't read
> code, we decode it. We examine it. A piece of code is not
> literature; it is a specimen.' He relates an anecdote from
> Donald Knuth about figuring out a Fortran compiler, and
> indeed, it reads more like a 'scientific investigation'
> than the process we refer to as 'reading.' Seibel is now
> changing his code-reading group to account for this: 'So
> instead of trying to pick out a piece of code and reading
> it and then discussing it like a bunch of Comp Lit. grad
> students, I think a better model is for one of us to play
> the role of a 19th century naturalist returning from a
> trip to some exotic island to present to the local
> scientific society a discussion of the crazy beetles they
> found.'"
> http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/01/21/1847217/code-is-not-literatur
> e
> 
> Here?s Seibel?s original text on his blog
> http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/
> 
> wishing you well.
> 
> marc
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> --
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> Pall Thayer
> artist
> http://pallthayer.dyndns.org
> *****************************
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> Pall Thayer
> artist
> http://pallthayer.dyndns.org
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==
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