Software vs. Art
<p>Jamie Richards asks an intelligent question in response to my essay on<br />
<a href='http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?m=200409#157'>deadly genius in the arts</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;m not programming-savvy at all, so maybe this is crap&#8230; what do you<br />
think about the idea that computer programming is a cultural area<br />
operating under the same conditions that set up the &#8220;Modernist<br />
disruption&#8221;?</p>
<p>As I understand it, in the proprietary model of software building, a<br />
company patron spends money to create products that are<br />
&#8220;comprehensible to the patron&#8217;s peers.&#8221; In open-source software<br />
building, programmers self-select, working on projects that are<br />
interesting to them (art for art&#8217;s sake&#8230;). &#8220;The breakneck pace of<br />
technological change&#8221; certainly applies to this chunk of human<br />
history, as well.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed it does, and your question is both subtle and astute.<br />
However, you&#8217;ve missed a crucial difference between software projects<br />
and fine art.  Software has to <em>work</em>.  Every piece of software<br />
exists in order to achieve some instrumental goal, and can be<br />
evaluated on how well it achieves that goal.</p>
<p>The vast con-game that most of modern art has become relies on a<br />
definition of &#8220;art&#8221; that equates it with pure expressiveness.  The<br />
modern &#8220;artist&#8221; can say of some randomly ugly artifact &#8220;this is my artistic<br />
statement, and if you don&#8217;t get it you are simply proving your own<br />
lack of sensitivity and taste&#8221;.</p>
<p>Open-source hackers can&#8217;t get away with this sort of thing.  If<br />
their code is broken and crash-prone or doesn&#8217;t meet the functional<br />
spec it claims to, nobody will take it seriously on any level at all<br />
&mdash; much less as art.  The requirement of engineering competence<br />
has the kind of constraining and filtering effect on open-source<br />
programming that the patronage system once did on pre-Modern art.</p>
<p>The really sharp reader is going to be asking, right about now,<br />
&#8220;OK, so what about architecture?&#8221;</p>
<p>Architecture is like programming in that it&#8217;s a form of art that<br />
operates within powerful functional constraints.  Buildings have to<br />
keep the rain off people, and not collapse on their heads.  So why<br />
haven&#8217;t those requirements prevented modern architecture from falling<br />
into the back-to-zero trap, from blighting the landscape with<br />
thousands of ugly brutalist cuboids?</p>
<p>We may cheerfully admit that some modern architecture is very<br />
lovely; Santiago Calatrava&#8217;s or Eero Saarinen&#8217;s organiform buildings<br />
come to mind.  Nevertheless, to save the argument I&#8217;m making, we need<br />
to show some relevant difference between architecture and software design.</p>
<p>One clue is that modern architects have not in fact forgotten how to<br />
make buildings that fulfil the minimum functional requirements. It is only<br />
in the aesthetic face those buildings present to the world that something<br />
bad has happened.  On this analogy, the place we should expect open-source<br />
software to have regressed relative to the products of proprietary patronage<br />
is in the specific area of user-interface design.</p>
<p>I have <a href='http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html'>pointed out<br />
elsewhere</a> that this is open source&#8217;s weakest area.  But on closer<br />
examination this analogy doesn&#8217;t work so well.  Almost any software<br />
user interface (UI) is more complicated and much more interactive than<br />
a typical building&#8217;s interface &mdash; therefore, much more<br />
constrained by the cognitive limitations of human beings; therefore,<br />
designing software UIs is more like engineering and less like art than<br />
designing building UIs.  Thus, the idiom of software UIs is less subject<br />
than is architecture to disruption by an expressive but deadly genius.</p></p>
