The Art of Programming

Presented at the PHPBenelux 2015 unconference - 24 Jan 2015

Transcript

2. whoami • (PHP) Developer Advocate at DigitalOcean • Working with PHP and Linux for 10+ years • Author of Vagrant Cookbook and phansible.com
3. A BRIEF STORY...
5. She liked cats before it was cool
8. “So, did you people see that layout contest thing from BliG where you can win a book? I think I'm gonna try it. I'm interested in the book about PHP and also in the Javascript one.” - me, Dec 2002
10. Programming: IS IT ART OR IS IT SCIENCE ?
11. BACK TO THE EARLY DAYS
12. Margaret Hamilton Lead software engineer, project Apollo
13. The Early Days "Software during the early days of this project was treated like a stepchild and not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines, such as hardware engineering; and it was regarded as an art and as magic, not a science.” - Margaret Hamilton
14. DEFINE:ART
15. What is Art? • Google: – "the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power." • Wikipedia: – "the word art may refer to several things: (i) a study of a creative skill, (ii) a process of using the creative skill, (iii) a product of the creative skill, or (iv) the audience's experience with the creative skill."
16. What is Art? “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” - Aristotle
17. What is Art? “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” - Oscar Wilde
18. What is Art? • Keys: – Expression – Individualism – Creativity – Audience Experience
19. What is Art? the expression of human creative skill and imagination, generating an output that can be possibly experienced by someone other than you
20. What is Art? • Not an adjective • Doesn't need to be good • Doesn't need to be beautiful • Artist is not an adjective either “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams
21. NOW, BACK TO SOFTWARE
22. Software Engineering "I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it (and those building it) would be given its due respect and thus I began to use the term “software engineering” to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas” Margaret Hamilton
23. Software Engineering • Still very young compared to other engineering fields • Strongly based on trial-and-error, instead of formulas / mathematical proofs • Tests are the closer we have to proofs, but they are also written by us
24. Programming languages
25. The blocks have specs, are well tested
26. Going “vanilla” Using a Framework
27. But the rest is up to you
28. But the rest is up to you
29. But the rest is up to you
30. ART&SCIENCE Programming is art built on top of logic.
31. CREATIVITY IS THE PIPELINE
32. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”  — Albert Einstein
34. There's no challenge for creativity!
35. CODEARTISTS
36. THEMYTHOF CREATIVITY
37. The myth of creativity “It lives on because it appeals to romantic prejudices about invention. There is a myth about how something new comes to be.” - Kevin Ashton, The Creativity Myth
38. The myth of creativity “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.” - Michelangelo
42. RIDE THAT FUCKING UNICORN
43. “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” - Andy Warhol
44. THANKS! https://joind.in/13411