Broken software.

There are loads of textbooks, articles, recommendations, and philosophies concerned with engineering of software to the point where one might believe software and engineering are inseparable. Even HTML, CSS and browser incompatibilities appear like engineering because the truth is web pages must be completed to a specified, even if only vaguely specified, need, and to usually a very concrete budget and schedule. The page must solve some UI problem, or provide some UI solution. Bear in mind here I am strictly referring to HTML, CSS and browsers. It seems to me that the UI, the aesthetics of an application, have become entwined with engineering. And I have to stop and ask myself why the hell is software so damn serious that it has infected web page design with all of its grown up seriousness, all of the time? Come on.

I can remember the thrill of programming when I was first learning how to do it badly. Trial and error isn't too great of a teacher when the only thing that complains is a computer -- could mean syntax error, data error, logic error, hardware error, design error, or anything almost. So when all of these things could go wrong there was a thrill when none of them actually did go wrong and everything appeared to work.

In school you are taught rigor. You are taught that programming should no longer be a crap shoot and a computer should no longer be treated as a slot machine. Pure logic, even mathematical discipline, aught to be brought to bear on each and every line of code. The design aught to be done first, with pseudo code or UML maybe, and then tests designed and written, and then requirements should be revisited if testing analysis revealed a design flaw/issue, and then finally the actual implementation can finally be written.

After all of that, somewhere in your senior semester maybe, you're introduced to extreme programming and all of this stuff is done, possibly in reverse order, and to varying degree, but still done. At that point, or before, you meet the all to oft said phrase: 'in the real world.' In the real world how complete any of the pieces become depends entirely on the amount of money you want to spend. Because everyone and every application in the real world is serious about money. (And yes I have just anthropomorphized the noun: application).

So in the real world writing software is about that all too serious concept money, while in the academic world it is about the completely illusive perfect form of algorithm and application.

After leaving college and getting a job in the real world it is not long before the thrill is gone, or dead, or it is nothing like it was before, or it has been exchanged for recognition of having completed a project (because what the world really needs is another software application for the masses entertainment or business agenda -- and yes that is sarcasm.) Ultimately the illusive perfect and the serious money concept collide, leaving behind a reason to drink.

So I'm going back. I'm going back to where the thrill was... I think there is still something to do there, and something to learn there.

(I think the next post will contain something about the supposed 'funness' of Ruby, but actually won't be concerned with Ruby itself... who knows).

20th Anniversary of Transformers

For some reason the time passed (20 years apparently) and I didn't even notice. It doesn't seem all that long ago that as a kid I was very much into transformers. So, I bought the the new anniversary edition of the Transformers movie. I took it home and watched it, and seeing the animation, which I swore looked soooooo much cooler when I was kid. (Admittedly that was still 20 years ago). Amazingly there is a lot of music in that movie, mostly music that is a bit more metal than it is frolicking looney toon music.

I nearly bought the DVD a few days before at Barnes & Noble. Before I got out the door though the casher remembered that the voice of Unicron was Orson Wells, the last thing that he did before he died. Robert Stack, and Judd Nelson happen to be 2 other voices. I was also reminded that back when this movie cam out I wasn't allowed to go see it because of the violence and the cussing. And as far as I can tell there are 2 profane words: "shit" and "damn," but yes the Transformers are at war and end up killing each other. This was a semi-serious piece of animation right in the midst of a culture that did not see animation as a legitimate peice of film. This pre-pixar, and pre-lion king, and basically pre-academy-award-for-animation (Shrek won the first award).

The movie may not be much compared to today's standards, but the effort, and the story, and the content were well ahead of its time, because not even today does the american public expect animation deal with death, warfare, destruction, and passing on torches.

Programming Art

In the past few years, during school, I've noticed that there is a purpose to everything, and perhaps education makes this point clearer to me. The picture is simple, in order to do calculus you need to now how to do some algebra, and trigonometry. In order to understand the power of calculus it is helpful to understand the way of propositional thinking (that is proofs, which introduces things like set theory), and then finally to understand things like advanced statistics you need to be willing to think that there was a point to this mountain of mathematics, that set theory, and counting problems, and calculus are powerful tools for doing probablistic reasoning.

If one does not believe, or hold some confidence in, all the mathematics back to counting on fingers, the interelation between all these things is lost on that person, and maybe even the interelation of less 'scientific' or 'logic-based' things are also lost on that person. But the most incredible thing about art maybe this: it doesn't quite fit into that mold.

I read this in Mack Street, by Orson Scott Card:
"'...We're like artists. They don't make food. They don't make shelter. You can't wear a painting, you can't eat a poem, you can't put a song over your head to shelter you from wind and rain. But we feed them, don't we, because we love the picture and the poem and the song. Like we feed children, who also don't earn their place.'
'We feed children because of what they can become.'"

I liked it. It says that art is needed, but we can't exactly put together why we need it, and also why it appears to be worth so little when thought of out of context. It fits a hole in our bodies which we didn't quite know we were missing, and makes our actions threads in a grand play, and our lives artwork in an amazing universe. Our relation to that artwork the very relationship we have with the Grand Designer, the One who knew us before the founding of the world.

Power's that are and Art.

Recently I heard someone say this: "Politics controls money, and the media controls law." It rang true with me. I could see the point, I remember examples, and for the most part couldn't say it wasn't true to some extent.

Yes, some may argue that this is a huge generality. I can also imagine that some folks seeth with hate for the American coorporate machine, the flaunting of American freedom, and the arrogant, almost niave, American outlook on the rest of the world. All I can say to those people is that I understand, even though I don't completely agree (otherwise why would I be writing this blog explaining these very things?)

But this blog is not about hating the state of the world. This blog is not about how people should rise up and change their society from the inside. This blog does not even hope to inspire people to take a political stance or report fair and accurate news as part of journalistic integrity.

Instead this blog is about Art. If indeed politics controls money, and if indeed the media controls justice, then who controls art? I have an answer (I think). The answer simply is the church, at least in America. So now I can imagine all of the American Corporate machine haters, with a strange sort of dear-in-the-headlights look, and the word "what?" wanting to fall from their collective lips.

When the reformist errupted on the scene in Germany years ago and decided to remove color, and papist things from their churches it affected art. Of course the same is true of Decartes, and the separation between the physical and the spiritual. It makes sense too that things like the Sistine Chapel, and the Last Supper, and the great and beautiful churches all over the world also inspired young, starving artist. Many popular bands, and musicians are born into the church, at some point.

Though I may be wrong there are many musicians likely to be christians. Chistian: that hated and now tainted word describing someone who is affiliated, but not neccessarily a servent of Christ. For me the list looks like this: U2, Switchfoot, Sting, Will Smith, Evenessence, Teddy Gieger, KJ-52, Jeremy Camp, POD. This list of likely christians goes on (and I'll probably add this list later on). But for a second realize that the biggest rock band in the world U2 is on that list.

By itself this list is not enough to make my point...but its a start.

Ok...here is a blog

I'm trying this out... not that anybody is reading this. So what you are reading here is a test.