
The Software Arts - Hooke
https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/08/sack-software-arts.html
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noelwelsh
I found the interview hard to follow, so I'll just focus on a few bits.

I disagree with the idea that mathematics has limited computer science. I
think the author has a belief that mathematics is a one-way street: you can
use mathematics but you can't create it. This is not the case. He's correct
the standard mathematics (say, undergraduate level engineering mathematics)
doesn't model changes over time and other things that are interesting about
computer systems, but this doesn't mean that new mathematics that does model
these things cannot be created (and they have). It's also important to realise
the practical limits of maths. Unless you're a pure mathematician you don't
create maths for the hell of it---you create it to answer some question (what
is the runtime of this code? Is it memory-safe?) Modelling everything is hard
so you only model enough to answer the question of interest.

I agree that there is an artistic aspect to programming, and I can think of
two interesting applications to this. Firstly is to study programming as an
art, and this is something the relatively new Programming journal and
conference (see [https://programming-journal.org/](https://programming-
journal.org/)) is trying to do. I think it's early days yet and we don't
really have good vocabulary or processes for this study. The second is to use
teaching techniques from art, such as studio learning, for programming. I
think this could be really valuable and is very under-explored.

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danwills
The demoscene (actual code art) isn't even mentioned in the article!? Makes it
hard to take it seriously, and gives the whole thing a stuffy and academic
kind of feeling.

Has anyone read the book? ("The Software Arts" by Warren Sack) Maybe demoscene
does get a mention in there?

Seems unlikely when this is the main conclusion of the article: "software
designers need to become fluent in social, political, and cultural theories
and methods"

I'm all for creativity in programming, truly, but this utterly fails to
"overcome formality with creativity" (as 1995 by Kewlers & MFX urges)

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debbiedowner
I guess he called it the "software arts" after "liberal arts," which at
Middlebury I once heard "prepares you for everything but trains you for
nothing."

It is a little interesting to think about software education that would train
you for nothing, classes I've taken in CS and Eng do train you for some pretty
specific things. I'd be interested in hearing the summary of some "university
courses in, for example, political theory that explore how software platforms,
like Facebook, should be redesigned".

But this interview has tons of run on sentences that mix together concepts and
everything bleeds together. For a moment I was shocked when I saw "computer
scientists like Donald Knuth and Steve Jobs" until I realized it was two
breathless sentences jammed together.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Artists make art. Academics write papers about artists who make art.

Some of those papers are interesting. Most of them are irrelevant to anyone
who isn't also an academic.

I would be surprised if that didn't apply here.

There's a kind of stock liberal arts academic curriculum - a bit of feminism,
a bit of Critical Theory, a bit of Marxism (but not much), stock mentions of
Adorno, Horkheimer, Barthes, Baudrillard, maybe Kristeva and others - that
passes for academic arts criticism these days.

To an outsider, it's more of a cargo cult where you gain entry by rather
robotically quoting from set texts and authorities and adopting certain
standard rhetorical techniques, than a convincing philosophical movement.

Given his comments, I would guess that he wants artists to learn some basic
coding, and he also wants developers to have some familiarity with that kind
of academic thinking.

Well - no. I don't see anything useful on the table there.

I'm hardly apolitical, but the reality is that some bedrock elements in
politics are defined by the absolute worst elements in human nature, and by
people who personify those elements - sometimes with plain old brutality, but
sometimes also in sophisticated and complex ways.

There is nothing in mainstream liberal arts academia that even acknowledges
this, never mind offers a solution to it. So I have no faith that his idea of
"political theory" is going to do much to make the next Facebook less likely,
or the current Facebook (etc) less dominant and manipulative.

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pards
The review is written by the university that employs him, and the book was
published by another university. This sounds like an echo chamber.

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env123
If you want to name a "software artist", I would say Steven Wittens best fit
the description [https://acko.net/](https://acko.net/)

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hyperpallium
Unpopular opinion: mathematics _is_ a liberal art.

Consensus in the mathematical community is the test of acceptance, not formal
verification.

"Formal verification" rests on assumptions, of axioms and proof techniques,
that it cannot verify.

