OT: Crazy Programming

[Paul Boddie]

aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote in message news:<abug1c$li3$1 at panix1.panix.com>...
> 
> I'm in the "programming is craft" camp.  Any time we write a new
> program, there's an element of human interface to consider; that can
> never be primarily a function of engineering.  But we can all strive to
> learn best practices like a cook or woodworker, and we can pick up new
> tools as they become available.

I agree with you in many respects - the most important thing about
working in any industry is to keep up with the best practices in that
industry. Really, programming is design, though, if any overloaded or
contentious words are to be used. Even in works of industrial design,
to take an example, certain artifacts can be considered artistic and
even more legitimate than certain recognised kinds of art, despite
various movements against industrialisation. Thus, programming should
be able to inspire artistic recognition through practices of good
design (the most important part of the activity) without resorting to
frivolously-decorative coding practices.

I can understand people believing that the expression of concepts
through a written language can be regarded as literature, but
programming languages are somewhat different from natural languages,
and it is certainly dubious to want to replicate certain parts of
natural languages in computer languages. "Sorry your program didn't do
what was expected of it - there's some use of double-entendre in the
code, which I thought would make the program much more amusing to
read."

Paul