Re: OT:is software eng an art?

In article <[e-mail]>,
Sean Russell  <[e-mail]> wrote:
>Rick Bradley wrote:
>
>> Art applies politics to the products of science to convey subjectivity,
>> but when good is objective.
>
>
>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.

I like this...  Again, there is an intersection between engineering and 
creativity (art).


>
>> 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.

Scientific theories do change from age to age - it's not a static 
endeavor.  The ancient Greek 
scientists viewed the universe much differently than we do now.  Look at 
how physics has changed in the last 100 years with the advent of relativity 
theory, quantum physics, uncertainty - it looks much different than it did 
100 years ago and it influences how we view the universe.  100 years from 
now I suspect that things will look much different from the way they do 
now.

>
>> 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.

Perhaps, and I don't disagree with you in principle, but think of how the 
term 'Science' has changed in the last 50 years.  In the '50s (which I 
wasn't around for, but I'm going by what people who were around for that 
time tell me) to say the word 'Science' would sort of cause a hush to 
fall over a room as though you were appealing to something almost 
religious.  There was an almost religious feeling that 'Science' would 
overcome all of our societal and physical ills.  There were ad campaigns 
for example by DuPont which said "Better living through chemistry".  Now, 
in our time if you said to a person in Bophal, India that we were going 
to have better living through chemistry I'm sure the reaction would be 
fairly negative based on the experience there and actually many of us even 
in the US find that phrase to be kind of quaint in it's outlook. Now we 
have more of a feelling that 'Science' is fallable.

>
>> 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.

Yes, I've recently been attending a music theory class and I have to say 
that intuitively there seems to be something just under the surface 
which seems very similar to mathemetics....

>
>Who do computer programmers stereotypically resemble?
>
>What is a stereotypical Ruby programmer?  I don't believe I've ever seen a 
>picture of Matz...
>

Well, we tend to be composed of engineers and scientists, but perhaps we 
need to try to get more artists interested and see what happens... 

Phil