On 26/07/12 marc <marc.garr...@furtherfield.org> wrote: >Close to the Machine: Code and the Mesmerism of Building a World from >Scratch > >by Maria Popova > >The sociocultural relationship between humanity and technology has >been the subject of equal parts dystopianism, utopianism, and layered >reflection. But what of the actual, intimate, one-on-one relationship >between human and machine, creator and created? That’s exactly what >software engineer Ellen Ullman explores in Close to the Machine: >Technophilia and Its Discontents (public library) — a fascinating look >at the riveting dawn of computer revolution in 1997, those formative >years of learning to translate the inexorable messiness of being human >into elegant and organized code, examined through Ullman’s singular >lens of being a rare woman on this largely male-driven forefront. > >http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/26/close-to-the-machine-ellen-ullman/
Just ordered a copy.. commenting on the snippet on brainpickings.org: I haven't experienced a project beginning with the beauty of a crystal. There might be small areas where my thinking is crystal but mostly it will be dark from the beginning (as opposed to after months of coding). There will be very little certainty about how things should work. But then I never work with pages of careful documents - nor have written code for an employer. I came across the most irritating programming related cartoon I've ever been unfortunate enough to rest my eyes upon: http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2012/07/cartoon-last-place-in-the-hacker-olympics.php It seems such a square-peg round-hole way of thinking about programming. I've had to learn not to compare myself to other programmers to regularly. It's too discouraging. Anyway, sometimes when working on implementing a new feature in a program it's almost like having to pull up a weed which has rooted itself down tightly into cracks between rocks/bricks/stonework. The weed being the way of doing things which must be removed for the new feature to be implemented. The new feature requiring a more solid re-implementation of the weak techniques of the weed. During the weeding out of shoddy code and re-implementing it's replacement, I am easily distracted. A line of code gets written once an hour if I'm lucky. Working in the dark away from crystalized ideas. Never sure if it will work out or not. Progress is slow. But suddenly one day it all suddenly almost unexpectedly fits together almost too easily. james _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
