From: Sean Russell <ser@...>
Date: 2002-05-12T10:25:21+09:00
Subject: Re: OT:is software eng an art?

Rick Bradley wrote:

> Art applies politics to the products of science to convey subjectivity,
> but when good is objective.

Can art be objective?  I remember a debate about a hypothetical pile of 
stones that is aesthetically pleasing.  Is it still art you don't know 
whether the stones were piled on purpose or arrived there by accident?  Is 
it art if someone creates a purely functional solution, with no attention 
to aesthetics or "meaning", but you find it attractive?  Does it matter?  
Similarly, if an artist creates a sculpture that lies, forgotten, at the 
bottom of the ocean, is it any less art for want of observers?

Science is the observation, measurement, and recording of how the universe 
works, as best we can.  The laws are theoretically proveable and 
disproveable, and there is only one right answer.  The very predictability 
of the observed behavior is what makes it science.  There is no one right 
answer with art.  Even the artist becomes merely an observer after the art 
is created.  

To bring this back to the original question about whether CS is art or 
science, I'd propose that when put to practical use, science becomes 
engineering.  It is at that point that art enters into the equation.  
Programming is just engineering; there are rules to follow, but there is a 
lot of creativity involved.  Programming is very similar to architectural 
design, only the mistakes are usually less expensive and more easily fixed.

As pertains to Ruby, I find that Ruby takes programming even further into 
the realm of art.  I have a limited amount of brain to work with; when I'm 
programming in C or Java, a significant portion of it is devoted to 
thinking about the underlying code needed to support my solution.  Ruby 
reduces that need, and lets me think more about the problem itself.  Ruby 
helps free the programmer to concentrate on the problem solution at a high 
level.

> In many senses art is more permanent than science -- consider how we can
> arrive across the ages at consensus interpretations of a work of art,
> held to be subjective at the time of it's creation; while the current

Now it is my turn to say "bah".  Consensus on interpretation?  Find any 
major work of art, and you'll find a dozen completely different and 
opposing scholarly interpretations on that work of art.  Where's the 
consensus?

Art can be relevant for longer than science, but the interpretation is not 
static; it changes not only from age to age, but from person to person.  
Science doesn't.  It is right (proveable) or wrong (disproveable), and if 
it right then later it is just less accurate than more modern models.

> value of science across the ages is mostly subjective, even though a
> theory was held to be objective at the time of its creation/acceptance.

"Value" certainly is objective.  I thought we were talking about science, 
not the exploitation of science.  (I use "exploitation" here without the 
negative connotations.)  You can't prove science wrong by saying it has no 
value, and you can't prove art wrong at all.

> Neither art nor science is truly objective nor subjective.  Both derive
> their value from the application of politics -- art and science apart
> from interpretation and social impact are empty.  Art and science are
> much closer than either side would care to admit.

You've just made my point for me.  Art strives to be subjective, science 
strives to objective.  If there were no other difference between the two, 
this would be enough to mark them as two completely different things.

This dovetails beautifully into a discussion I was having with my wife about 
Math and Art.  In the most general terms, we were discussing the 
similarities between the two fields, and my wife remarked that musicians 
stereotypically resemble stereotypical mathematicians.  I pointed out that 
there is a known close relationship between music and math and that, 
perhaps, music was more like math than it was like "other" arts -- 
sculpture, painting, writing, etc.

Who do computer programmers stereotypically resemble?

What is a stereotypical Ruby programmer?  I don't believe I've ever seen a 
picture of Matz...

--- SER