{"id":159,"date":"2004-10-17T11:31:05","date_gmt":"2004-10-17T16:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=159"},"modified":"2004-10-17T11:31:05","modified_gmt":"2004-10-17T16:31:05","slug":"software-vs-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=159","title":{"rendered":"Software vs. Art"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jamie Richards asks an intelligent question in response to my essay on<br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?m=200409#157'>deadly genius in the arts<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not programming-savvy at all, so maybe this is crap&#8230; what do you<br \/>\nthink about the idea that computer programming is a cultural area<br \/>\noperating under the same conditions that set up the &#8220;Modernist<br \/>\ndisruption&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>As I understand it, in the proprietary model of software building, a<br \/>\ncompany patron spends money to create products that are<br \/>\n&#8220;comprehensible to the patron&#8217;s peers.&#8221; In open-source software<br \/>\nbuilding, programmers self-select, working on projects that are<br \/>\ninteresting to them (art for art&#8217;s sake&#8230;). &#8220;The breakneck pace of<br \/>\ntechnological change&#8221; certainly applies to this chunk of human<br \/>\nhistory, as well.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed it does, and your question is both subtle and astute.<br \/>\nHowever, you&#8217;ve missed a crucial difference between software projects<br \/>\nand fine art.  Software has to <em>work<\/em>.  Every piece of software<br \/>\nexists in order to achieve some instrumental goal, and can be<br \/>\nevaluated on how well it achieves that goal.<\/p>\n<p>The vast con-game that most of modern art has become relies on a<br \/>\ndefinition of &#8220;art&#8221; that equates it with pure expressiveness.  The<br \/>\nmodern &#8220;artist&#8221; can say of some randomly ugly artifact &#8220;this is my artistic<br \/>\nstatement, and if you don&#8217;t get it you are simply proving your own<br \/>\nlack of sensitivity and taste&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Open-source hackers can&#8217;t get away with this sort of thing.  If<br \/>\ntheir code is broken and crash-prone or doesn&#8217;t meet the functional<br \/>\nspec it claims to, nobody will take it seriously on any level at all<br \/>\n&mdash; much less as art.  The requirement of engineering competence<br \/>\nhas the kind of constraining and filtering effect on open-source<br \/>\nprogramming that the patronage system once did on pre-Modern art.<\/p>\n<p>The really sharp reader is going to be asking, right about now,<br \/>\n&#8220;OK, so what about architecture?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Architecture is like programming in that it&#8217;s a form of art that<br \/>\noperates within powerful functional constraints.  Buildings have to<br \/>\nkeep the rain off people, and not collapse on their heads.  So why<br \/>\nhaven&#8217;t those requirements prevented modern architecture from falling<br \/>\ninto the back-to-zero trap, from blighting the landscape with<br \/>\nthousands of ugly brutalist cuboids?<\/p>\n<p>We may cheerfully admit that some modern architecture is very<br \/>\nlovely; Santiago Calatrava&#8217;s or Eero Saarinen&#8217;s organiform buildings<br \/>\ncome to mind.  Nevertheless, to save the argument I&#8217;m making, we need<br \/>\nto show some relevant difference between architecture and software design.<\/p>\n<p>One clue is that modern architects have not in fact forgotten how to<br \/>\nmake buildings that fulfil the minimum functional requirements. It is only<br \/>\nin the aesthetic face those buildings present to the world that something<br \/>\nbad has happened.  On this analogy, the place we should expect open-source<br \/>\nsoftware to have regressed relative to the products of proprietary patronage<br \/>\nis in the specific area of user-interface design.<\/p>\n<p>I have <a href='http:\/\/www.catb.org\/esr\/writings\/cups-horror.html'>pointed out<br \/>\nelsewhere<\/a> that this is open source&#8217;s weakest area.  But on closer<br \/>\nexamination this analogy doesn&#8217;t work so well.  Almost any software<br \/>\nuser interface (UI) is more complicated and much more interactive than<br \/>\na typical building&#8217;s interface &mdash; therefore, much more<br \/>\nconstrained by the cognitive limitations of human beings; therefore,<br \/>\ndesigning software UIs is more like engineering and less like art than<br \/>\ndesigning building UIs.  Thus, the idiom of software UIs is less subject<br \/>\nthan is architecture to disruption by an expressive but deadly genius.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jamie Richards asks an intelligent question in response to my essay on deadly genius in the arts: I&#8217;m not programming-savvy at all, so maybe this is crap&#8230; what do you think about the idea that computer programming is a cultural area operating under the same conditions that set up the &#8220;Modernist disruption&#8221;? As I understand&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=159\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Software vs. Art<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}