Artistic Programming

It's the sixth issue of Artistic Programming newsletter. Is it bugging you? Or, you would like to bug us back with your feedback. Try responding this time, for a change. You never know it may change you forever.

A Quick Word

Bull $#%@*

Nothing can be farther from the truth. And I say this not only for "programming", but anything that comes under the purview of "logical" and "intellectual" activity. By refusing to use anything other than logic, and by emphasizing only on logical and analytical thinking, we are robbing ourselves of nearly 90% of our abilities.

You will be surprised to know that Einstein attributed his discovery of the Theory of Relativity not to any special gift but rather to what he called his "retarded development". In his words: "I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded,as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up."

It started off with a question: "What would it be like to run beside a light beam, at the speed of light?"

The more he "played" with this question for 10 years, the more questions he got. And more the stuff he had to play with.

If he did so, he would have remained as mediocre as his counterparts. For example, suppose that he asked himself that you were riding on the end of a light beam and you held a mirror before your face. Would you see your reflection in the mirror, or not ?

The "Feel" Of Programming

According to "logic", the answer was obvious. You, the mirror and the light rays from your face are relatively at rest to each other and so there is no chance of this light ray ever reaching the mirror, forget reflecting and coming back to you to enable you see your face.
What did Einstein do ?

He refused to accept this answer. He didn't like a spooky universe where you look into a mirror and cannot see your face.

It took several years to provide a rigorous mathematical solution to this weird, imaginative idea.

However it all started with those weird thought-experiments, those playful questions and refusing to accept anything that didn't sound right to his gut feelings, however factual that might be.

"Invention is not the product of logical thought," Einstein concluded, "even though the final product is tied to a logical structure".

Something similar can be said about programming. The end product is logical, but a strictly logical approach will never take you there.

A really efficient programmer knows the art of balancing between the two, and utilizing one to boost the other. An imbalance in the two will either result in a "day-dreamer" or an "overly stiff intellectual who everybody scoffs at".

What kind of results can you create in your programming life by balancing gut-level thinking and logical thinking ? Can this really make you a super-productive programmer?

DID YOU KNOW?

" Do You Get the JITTERS? "
We all know that drinking copious amounts of coffee and staying up into the wee hours of the morning fixing a computer problem or playing shoot'em up games can cause one to have the jitters. While that is somewhat of a workable term definition, jitter buffers (and jitter filters) in tech terminology refer to a hardware device or software process that eliminates jitter caused by transmission delays in an Internet telephony (VoIP) network. We also have jitter busters, which is a device that aims to suppress jitters. It brings the age old saying of "having the jitters" whole new meaning.

F-O-O-D For Thot!

A problem by sufficiently large number of people is not considered a problem. Debugging two days to locate a missing semi-colon is fine, because that is the "industry standard". Do you realize how you can reduce your debugging time from "days" to "minutes" by just learning how to "create a strategy" for debugging your program? Can you imagine what that will make your career look like?

A Quick Word

Bull $#%@*

DID YOU KNOW?

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."

Aristotle

F-O-O-D For Thot!