131–140 of 207 posts
Art is "expression of an idea". Programming ISN'T art; the program/game/website could be, but programming is a CRAFT. The people he mentions are not artists, they are craftsmen.
Why are people mixing everything up? Since when code has a soul? AI can be just a tool. You use it the same way you use a keyboard, a computer, a pencil, etc. I'm pretty sure you can build art with it, much like using any tool. People are making art with ascii. You can do art with anything. But AI can also be much more than a tool, and why can't it have a soul? What's a soul anyway, except something that humans are m…
If you don't know what a soul is, and you think it's something people just make up, then you are missing out on the experience of being human and you have a bigger problem than not being able to understand what art is.
I am (still) not a proponent for AI, however I hope AI might do to programming what the camera did to painting, and I hope that will be a good thing. What we understand as painting today is very different then what painting meant pre-camera. Now it is mostly a leisure activity and creative outlet. Where back in the day it was a serious occupation for capturing reality, and therefore creativity was taking second stage…
I used to really enjoy writing code, to the point where I would have thought of it as art and fine contemplation. 25 years of corporate development beat that enjoyment out of me. AI is just the final nail in the coffin. I have no enjoyment left in coding; I firmly believe the current crop of programming languages will go in the same vein as human written assembly language did. I don't believe the current LLM-based AI…
That brings me joy after 30+ years of typing at the keyboard.
In the end though, it's the problem solving that makes this job fun. Minor dopamine hits when a minor thing gets fixed (or some weird bug resolves itself into a 8 bits/1 byte solution!). That's all gone when working with LLMs - it's perfect code each time ... until ... you have to understand what went wrong ... more LLMs, more Tokens, more cash burnt. But no problems understood nor solved, just prompt adjusting and virtual monkeys at virtual keyboards.
Oh, well - here's to the bright future of electric creativity out of the tube.
I am (still) not a proponent for AI, however I hope AI might do to programming what the camera did to painting, and I hope that will be a good thing. What we understand as painting today is very different then what painting meant pre-camera. Now it is mostly a leisure activity and creative outlet. Where back in the day it was a serious occupation for capturing reality, and therefore creativity was taking second stage…
Nobody will go to an exhibition or a museum to stare at code like we do with paintings. The public for creative programming is really thin.
I am (still) not a proponent for AI, however I hope AI might do to programming what the camera did to painting, and I hope that will be a good thing. What we understand as painting today is very different then what painting meant pre-camera. Now it is mostly a leisure activity and creative outlet. Where back in the day it was a serious occupation for capturing reality, and therefore creativity was taking second stage…
Excellent analogy which I'm annoyed I didn't think of myself.
Art is "expression of an idea". Programming ISN'T art; the program/game/website could be, but programming is a CRAFT. The people he mentions are not artists, they are craftsmen.
Does any of it really matter?
A Urinal[1] can be Art. A collection of programs[2] can be Art. Why?
Because we define it as such. Art isn't clearly defined nor should it be. Art is an expression of an idea, and at the same time, it isn't. It depends on what you think, what I believe and what everyone else knows.
Art for me is the expression of the fact that nothing makes sense yet we act as if we understand the sense behind it all, and at the same time, I dunno.
This is not a pipe[3]. As this is not a program or is it? Apparently this can be a prompt to generate code - nowadays.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
Why are people mixing everything up? Since when code has a soul? AI can be just a tool. You use it the same way you use a keyboard, a computer, a pencil, etc. I'm pretty sure you can build art with it, much like using any tool. People are making art with ascii. You can do art with anything. But AI can also be much more than a tool, and why can't it have a soul? What's a soul anyway, except something that humans are m…
Counterpoint: building integrations for SAP is not art.