thedeadparrot

So I was reading Zadie Smith's review of The Social Network, because at this point ninhursag and merisunshine36 have convinced me that I need to see it, despite my initial resistance.

Anyway, it's worth reading as a meditation on a changing internet society from someone who does not quite understand it but is willing to try, and even though I don't agree with her about everything, I liked the thoughtfulness she brings to the subject. She's fully aware of her own uncertainty and lack of full understanding. (Also, for you Eduardo fans, she has some things to say about Andrew Garfield's face that made me think of you. :p)

But what really struck me is this section:

If it’s not for money and it’s not for girls—what is it for? With Zuckerberg we have a real American mystery. Maybe it’s not mysterious and he’s just playing the long game, holding out: not a billion dollars but a hundred billion dollars. Or is it possible he just loves programming? No doubt the filmmakers considered this option, but you can see their dilemma: how to convey the pleasure of programming—if such a pleasure exists—in a way that is both cinematic and comprehensible? Movies are notoriously bad at showing the pleasures and rigors of art-making, even when the medium is familiar.

Programming is a whole new kind of problem. Fincher makes a brave stab at showing the intensity of programming in action (“He’s wired in,” people say to other people to stop them disturbing a third person who sits before a laptop wearing noise-reducing earphones) and there’s a “vodka-shots-and-programming” party in Zuckerberg’s dorm room that gives us some clue of the pleasures. But even if we spent half the film looking at those busy screens (and we do get glimpses), most of us would be none the wiser. Watching this movie, even though you know Sorkin wants your disapproval, you can’t help feel a little swell of pride in this 2.0 generation. They’ve spent a decade being berated for not making the right sorts of paintings or novels or music or politics. Turns out the brightest 2.0 kids have been doing something else extraordinary. They’ve been making a world.

I'm at the point in my life where I'm really bad at teaching programming, because all of the assumptions, all of the thought patterns you need for programming have become second nature to me. It's hard for me to rewind to a point where I can understand what it's like for people who have never seen code before and who have no idea how to

So then, how do you explain programming to someone else? How do you write about it? How can you represent it? Programming at its heart is an act of creation, but the process of programming isn't very interesting. You can't fill people's minds with the joys of using a well-written library or the thrill of getting your code to compile for the first time. Literal programming is almost impossible to make exciting to non-programmers. The same vocabulary and background just isn't there. Most of the time I see programming show up (usually in the context of scifi), it's deeply metaphorical. There are virtual realities where you can craft entire buildings or artificial intelligences that are slowly manipulated into being.

I write about programming metaphorically, myself. It's such a huge part of my life and my the way I look at the world that I keep trying to describe what it feels like, and I'm just bad at it. My best attempt is probably Interpreted Languages, since technopathy is just an extremely advanced version of programming, is all. In order to be good at programming, you have to understand how computers think. You have to listen to them when they're telling you things aren't going right, and you have to be patient with them when everything is going wrong. I don't think computers are alive by any means, but I think that when you learn programming, you are learning a new way to talk, a new way to think. The vocabulary of a language defines how people can think in it, what ideas can be expressed, and computer programming languages make that so very literal.

I tried writing some stuff about programming languages into a fic once. This is only bit of it that's worth reading:

The theoretician in Rodney loves Haskell, loves the pure mathematical beauty of the language, but the engineer in him can't stand anything but the right-up-against-the-hardware power of C. The Ancients only use one language for their systems, simple and clean and powerful, and Rodney spends a lot of time staring at the unearthly code of their systems, tracing the control flow with the tips of his fingers.

I think that's some of the best I could do to capture the magic of it, the joy of understanding and learning and creating. It's a little like the joy of writing and reading, but not quite, and it's sort of like the joy of building something with your hands, but not quite. It's like both of those things and like neither of those things, and now I'm just going around in circles so I'm going to stop.

Also, I'm not convinced that Zuckerberg did it all for the love of programming, I gotta say. That dude's an asshole.


Because I might as well:

I'm at thedeadparrot on the AO3. Subscribe to me - fandoms in the immediate queue include Sherlock Holmes (2009), SGA, and Sherlock (BBC)! (You'll need to log in to see the subscribe button.)

okay, so I've borrow the complete works of Arthur C. Clarke from the library, and I'm definitely not going to be able to read them all in time. So, If anyone's a fan, a list of stories I have to read would be nice. Like really nice. Please?

There's also this awesome Linux commercial that IBM did a few years back, and it's just plain cool, a little creepy as well, and not entirely accurate. Plus, it's kind of old. But it's still a really good ad. Go watch.

Have been messing around with Deskbar and Beagle. Pretty nifty. It's trying really hard to be Quicksilver, I think. Still, I like it perfectly fine on its own. I'm still not used to using it, but I'm sure I'll fall in love pretty quickly once I use it on a regular basis.

I also installed Ubuntu on my parent's desktop. It's name is "wampa". I changed the name of my laptop, as well. It used to be "emery-419" after my room at Brown, but I figured since I won't be living there anymore, I should probably change it. It's now "tauntaun", because apparently I am a giant nerd.

Just watched the season finale of Smallville, and it's such a bad show, omg. And yet, for some reason I still watch it. Lois is still awesome. Chloe is still cool. Lex's manpain continues to bore me to tears. The Clark and Lex subtext is still going strong. Lana is beginning to develop a personality. I think. It's kind of hard to tell. Lionel continues to confuse me (in both good and bad ways). James Marsters speaking with his American accent still sounds weird.

Only use Limewire for one or two songs every gazillion days? There's the rather cute Cabos, which works for both Windows and Macs. No Linux, weirdly enough, considering that it's written in Java.

Boring screensavers getting you down? Really Slick Screensavers are, in fact, as slick as advertised. They're incredibly beautiful, though I would watch out for using them on older/weaker machines.

CSS Vault. Pretty CSS designs. I am so jealous. Fucking creative people. Oh wait, the alternative is really shitty looking, hard to read websites. Come back, good web designers, all is forgiven!

Firefox 1.5! I'm all asquee. (though you should probably watch out for broken extensions and the like if you're updating.)

Release notes with all the new stuff. I'm especially digging the drag-and-drop tabs and the quicker forward and back functionality. The new Mozilla.com site is looking kick-ass as well.

I also have a new, spiffy portable hard drive. When I get the chance, I'll see if I can get Gentoo onto it. Not sure when, precisely, but it would be cool.