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