Comments on Out of the Woods Now: Word made flesh?

Kind of makes the whole Genesis account that much ...

2006-10-14T17:59:00.000-05:00

Kind of makes the whole Genesis account that much more interesting to think about--the world beginning with words.

Insofar as some say the known universe appears to ...

2006-10-14T09:45:00.000-05:00

Insofar as some say the known universe appears to be directed by software; and that programming is language that actually makes stuff happen; then yes, programming might qualify as poetry. Perhaps more tenously but in a manner no less thought-provoking, it also might qualify as DNA for silicon-based life forms.

--Renaissance

Ana Maria, Bud la está serenando, la canción es un...

2006-10-09T20:44:00.000-05:00

Ana Maria, Bud la está serenando, la canción es una
lista de libros que ha leido, llena de enlaces, ay que pereza tanto enlace...¿No va a jugar? ¡Vayase pa donde la moza de Chekhov pues!

Point(s) taken! Yes, that's true. I guess I wasn...

2006-10-09T08:04:00.000-05:00

Point(s) taken! Yes, that's true. I guess I wasn't thinking so much of the problem of "one right way" but of the aspect of certainty--the hard fact of a result that "works" and it being self-evident. I don't think that a poem needs to have a definite provable effect or "function" for it to be a worthwhile poem. There is much more subjectivity and grey in literary endeavor, no?

That said, it's still an intriguing comparison--and I'm still interested in reading your ideas of poetic styles and their programming equivalents.

Thanks for the link. I can definitely relate to th...

2006-10-08T22:49:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the link. I can definitely relate to the sense of power and solidity that comes with programming. But that excerpt seems to imply that programming involves one right way. Not so. The delicious language Perl holds as it's motto, "There's more than one way to do it." Assign three Perl programmers the same task, and you will invariably get three different approaches. So you approach correctness based on an understanding of the problem (is speed of execution most important? Or perhaps the ability to handle errors gracefully? What about the relationship to the user?) In this way, knowing the language is just the beginning. Writing software becomes expressive as much as it is linear -- and hence the metaphor holds more water than would seem to the uninitiated.