The FT today has an article about the creativity of computer code, which includes this wonderful quotation from Ada Lovelace:
“The Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere ‘calculating machines,’ ” she wrote elsewhere. “It holds a position wholly its own … A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed … in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible. Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other.”
The feature is an extract from Vikram Chandra’s [amazon_link id=”0571310303″ target=”_blank” ]Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software[/amazon_link], which sounds intriguing on the basis of the article.
It’s many years since I had to write code – it was Fortran in the early 1980s – other than bits of HTML for fun. But I always enjoyed it and certainly occasionally experienced that sense of flow you get from absorption in a creative experience. In a way, code can be more creative than natural languages because it has to operate within the strict constraint of formal logic.
Chandra ends here:
[amazon_image id=”0571310303″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software[/amazon_image]
I’m studying towards a Java Programming certificate, so completely agree with enjoying the ‘flow’ of the experience.
I don’t quite agree with this:
“But programs are not just algorithms as concepts or applied ideas; they are algorithms in motion. Code is uniquely kinetic. It acts and interacts with itself, with the world. In code, the mental and the material are one. Code moves. It changes the world.”
Surely with organic consciousness (like our brains), “the mental and material are one”. As we think and do things, we physically change the wiring of our brains. Although it’s great that we are able to create things that mimic our consciousness.
Speaking as one completely ignorant, what sort of programming applications do economists use? (i.e What sort of tasks are code-writing used to perform?)
It’s rather purple prose, I agree – but I’ve not read the book.
These days most economists mostly use packages such as Stata or E-Views. But there was only one package around when I was a graduate student, which did basic least-squares regressions. Hence my foray into Fortran. Anyway, the purpose is empirical estimation and there has been huge scientific progress in econometric methods during the past 25 years. I’m not sure that all economists are as careful as they should be in doing econometrics, however.