Programming and Writing
antirez.com
Programming and Writing
1–10 of 87 posts
Re: Programming and Writing
#2I’m embarking on the same journey and this piece increases my confidence that the novel(s) I’ve been planning through my 20 year programming career will actually come to fruition. It’s scary at times because I haven’t written fiction since high school.
Re: Programming and Writing
#3The greatest commonality between writing and programming is that in those statements something happens where that something is a series of actions in furtherance of a common goal, a plot. Achieving such often requires refactoring and simplification. The work evolves towards a clarity that is polished only in hindsight and not immediately clear from the cover or readme.md file.
It is pretty easy to see how poor or grand some instance of software is if you look at it like a single complete product, like a novel.
As to the difference the article mentions revisions of a work. Games are most similar to novels in this regard. Popular game titles don’t evolve but instead release sequels. They may occasionally release patches or contain Easter eggs which is similar to published community support projects like workbooks and commentary from a works original author.
Re: Programming and Writing
#4The greatest commonality between writing and programming is that in those statements something happens where that something is a series of actions in furtherance of a common goal, a plot. Achieving such often requires refactoring and simplification. The work evolves towards a clarity that is polished only in hindsight and not immediately clear from the cover or readme.md file. It is pretty easy to see how poor or gra…
On "refactoring" in novels:
On many occasions I've heard an author say something like "I got half-way through the book and I found out that one of the characters didn't want to do the thing I'd planned for them, so I had to deal with the plot changing in this unexpected way."
I've only once heard an author say "so I had to go back and rewrite the character until they were the sort of person that did want to do the thing I'd planned for them."
Re: Programming and Writing
#5[deleted]
Re: Programming and Writing
#6Another commonality is that writing and programming uses the same type of mental energy thus after eight ours of programming you will most likely not have energy for 2h of writing.
Re: Programming and Writing
#7It's an interesting perspective, but from what little creative work I have done I would say the big difference is programming is very logical, very precise, and creative work is very expressive, and very, very imprecise. Creative work really requires you to listen to how you feel about the final product, how it sounds, how it is experienced, while programming is really about being organized and correct. I suppose there is some overlap, after all programmers need to think about user experiences as well, but that's not the same thing.
Re: Programming and Writing
#8The two practices have quite a bit in common, including the need to break down a very large, hard-to-grasp problem (a novel or an application) into a set of smaller easier-to-solve problems (objects, functions, chapters) that fit together in a coherent whole.
I wrote a similar post when, after many years of software development, I finally got around to writing my first novel. https://adiamond.me/2015/01/writing-and-programming/
The author is right in saying the key is really to show up and put in the work. That can be really hard for a lot of people, but programmers are already accustomed to it.
BTW, Vikram Chandra's Geek Sublime also does a good job investigating the ties between writing code and writing prose. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19353724-geek-sublime
Chandra goes way back, pointing out that the generative grammar we use today to describe valid programming language constructs was first created 2500 years ago in India by a guy named Panini who fully and precisely described the structure of the entire Sanskrit language. There's more on that here, if you're interested: https://medium.com/@dmitrypavluk/we-should-thank-sanskrit-fo...
Re: Programming and Writing
#9Cool! Some of my favorite sci-fi writers are programmers or former programmers — Andy Weir, Charlie Stross, Dennis Taylor.
Although that may have more to do with me (as a programmer) than with any relationship between fiction and software.
Re: Programming and Writing
#10Looking fwd to your novel's release, @antirez!