
Dabblers and Blowhards (2005) - kick
https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
======
syntheno
I hadn't read Paul Graham's article until I saw this, so I read that first
before diving into this analysis of it.

It feels like he missed the whole point of what Paul Graham was trying to
say... like yes obviously painter move globs of color around and software
engineers write instructions to a box of electricity, but that's not the high
level point Paul Graham was going for. Also the part about the women was super
cringy, it felt dated, weird, and unrelated.

I think from a high level painters and software developers are in fact alike.
Just like how engineers have objective constraints to work with when producing
a solution to something, the message that artists are trying to convey in
their work is equally constrained in certain situations.

For example, in depiction of photorealism, minute details like glints of light
in an eyeball can make or break a painting. Artists like Johannes Vermeer were
even renown for utilizing tools to depict the physical phenomenon of light in
their work, by using a camera obscura.

There are many other examples of physical phenomena artists have attempted to
reproduce in their work over many art periods that are comparable to the
objective constraints engineers have to work with, which I wont discuss in
this comment, but even in abstract and expressionist work, a parallel can be
drawn to engineering.

When artists create abstract work they take a risk and sometimes their work is
misunderstood, mocked, or just ignored... much like many frameworks,
libraries, languages, and software projects created over the years that
attempted to push the limits of what we think we know about programming and
software development.

The author of this post missed the high level point quite badly.

~~~
jariel
'Carpenter' is a far more suitable comparison because almost zero of software
is written 'for abstract reasons'. Software is almost always written for
practical reasons.

Real carpentry involves an immense amount of detail, nuance, and a number of
micro-skills you'd never imagine just to do mundane things.

It also keeps the analogy that a lot of people think they can be carpenters
because they 'can build a deck'. But even building a deck, well, can be quite
hard and require bits of skill that can take years to develop. A lot of people
think they can write software as well. Though it's possible to hack things
together quickly, it takes years of focus to 'get good'.

I suggest that nobody in the educated class wants to compare themselves to
what people often consider 'blue collar workers' whereas the comparison to
'artists' evokes a more supposedly distinguished aspiration.

Having known enough 'master tradesman' frankly I have more respect for them
than most artists I know. That said, I'm not sure where in the quality range
the artists I know sit.

------
harveyesq
No respect. Love the contrarian takedown in 2005, but were it not for this gem
of a story below, I would have said the same thing about this guy and has
writing. It's pretty good. Not PG good. But good enough.

[https://idlewords.com/2004/05/attacked_by_thugs.htm](https://idlewords.com/2004/05/attacked_by_thugs.htm)

------
benjohnson
The barely contained boiling jealousy this author has for Paul Graham makes is
really difficult for me to read this without immediately dismissing it.

~~~
lidHanteyk
Funnily, with over a decade of hindsight and experience, the author comes off
as a much more accomplished and sincere writer than Graham. Sure, he's
shitposting before 2008, but I'm going to credit that, and say that he's ahead
of the trend.

