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Programming is Art

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Re: Programming is Art

#161

Post by satnhak »

xeyownt wrote: post #11

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…

What I find ironic are the "creatives" who declare resolutely that AI cannot create art,... now here is this cool vibe-coded software I've made. It's like saying a chisel cannot create a sculpture. Yeah, OK, but without the chisel the sculpture wouldn't have been made. Who cares. It's a tool. What you do with it is up to you.

Re: Programming is Art

#162

Post by pksebben »

luxcem wrote: post #109
trashb wrote: post #46

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.

one doesn't go to a gallery to watch the painting get made. Creative coding can still be enjoyed by appreciating the output.

The immediate rebuttal to that might be that "AI could just do it" but that's not entirely true - the sort of art that you (typically) see in a gallery isn't "an accurate representation of the world as viewed" just as a lot of "code as art" isn't "a problem solved with code". The camera captures (mostly accurate) images, and AI is usually writing "code that does a thing".

The expressiveness (can) come from a place that's deeply human, and can yield a product that is tangibly diifferent from what an efficient coding process would normally produce.

A few of us played a game when I was in batch at the Recurse Center - we called it Monstrosity. The game was to build a string in the absolutely least efficient way possible - using the largest stack, the most network hops, the most obfuscatory and difficult methods to create a character (bit-shifting algorithms to make ASCII, anyone?). It was beautiful, and it was the kind of thing that AI would never think to do (at least, not without significant cajoling and even then you'd be missing the point).

Re: Programming is Art

#163

Post by theptip »

It’s really important to understand the various perspectives in AI discourse; those who view Programing as Art feel a deep affront and threat on many levels. It’s legitimate.

If you loved the art of writing code, and also enjoyed getting paid a boatload for that activity, you’re losing out in the trade as AI shifts the focus of software from coding to designing.

I do think that we could see a golden age in Programming as Art, similar to how chess is more popular than ever before, even though your phone could defeat Magnus Carlsen. All except a few superstar streamers will likely be doing it for love and not for money. But it’ll be easier to pick up and to learn than ever before, for those interested in doing so.

Re: Programming is Art

#164

Post by gfdhjd3 »

trashb wrote: post #46

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…

[dead]

Re: Programming is Art

#166

Post by sashank_1509 »

p2detar wrote: post #120

Weaving is art. Should we replace "programming" and "programmers" with "weaving" and "weavers" in this write-up and refer to history and how it worked out for weavers during the industrial revolution, I think it is clear where all this is going. I know some people are mad about this and I am as well. However, as someone that is 20+ years in the field, I feel I've seen enough to say things are fundamentally and irreve…

I’ve thought of this and even societally outcomes seem pretty bad.

> Replace detailed unique clothes with cookie cutter bland clothes

> Replace a job with craftsmanship and skill to a mind numbing boring job that possesses very little skill

> The machines still do a much worse job than a good tailor, but most of the public don’t care and can’t even judge good quality vs bad.

> We got a lot more clothes and freed a certain class of people to go work on other stuff (this second point is a bit doubtful as in the immediate future they just worked in sweatshops but eventually maybe? )

So yeah kind of a stupid trade in retrospect, I suspect programming will go the same way. We’ll drown in mountains of functional slop, all apps currently will be made by agents. Public will have more software / don’t care and a good human programmer will still clock agents in code quality, which is a subjective aesthetic metric.

Re: Programming is Art

#168

Post by goonersallofyou »

luxcem wrote: post #109
trashb wrote: post #46

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.

It sounds like you have a very narrow understanding of what Art can be.

Re: Programming is Art

#169

Post by ux266478 »

bigupthewhole wrote: post #99
Martin_Silenus wrote: post #92

Well, my way of thinking about it is basically that I did not spend my life shiting on over-engineered-bloated-Golberg-machine source code written by so-called programmers to finish my life asking agents to generate these same stuff 10x faster. I love code, you don't, fine. So be it.

While this was true 1+ years ago, the agents don't write bad code anymore. They might not write according to your preferences, but you can also have it adjust to your style. Also, humans didn't evolve to write or read code, even the best programmers are terrible at it from an objective point of view, if we compare it to what is theoretically possible.

> Also, humans didn't evolve to write or read code

That's a weird way of looking at it. Programming lives at the end of a well-worn path uncountably many millenia long, defined entirely by our biology. We didn't "evolve to do it" in the same way a duck didn't evolve to swim in a specific river.

Re: Programming is Art

#170

Post by elog08 »

Robert Pirsig's philosophy has helped me with understanding that there can be inherent value in the process of frictioned creation itself. His meditative exercises have helped manage the soul-less after-taste of writing/designing/art-ing with GenAI.

You can still get some value from his works below without committing to his metaphysics.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Lila

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