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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what reaction you want to elicit by being so scathing, but I disagree with your assessment as it relies on the premise that programming is a science, which it's not.

It's a two headed beast, part science, part craft and _why lives deep in the craft territory. I think many of us here took time to realise that, that there's not just a right answer. When you realise it's a craft you want to be artistic with it, but you can only be with the output, who ever sees the input?

In my opinion _why neatly bridges that desire to be artistic with the invisible nature of the craftsmanship of code. It's an outlet that coding can't sate. And it happens by doing that he also taught and helped a lot of people.

Have you noticed how a lot of programmers are also musicians? I think that's part of the same desire.

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There's nothing wrong with combining, say, technical and expressive aims. In a way, that's kind of the holy grail of making stuff. That's not the problem though.

I have spent a great deal of time interpreting, appraising, and creating works of art myself, and when I read the OP pdf, pretension and self-absorption ooze through every page. Hollow writing. Whimsical and heartfelt? I say arbitrary and jejune.

It's because the community that follows him is so desperate for an existence proof of the above mentioned combination (hey look, we're arty too!), that they neglect to really look at the situation objectively.

I find this kind of response entertaining, because to me, your comments about it reek of pretentiousness. Then again, if there's one thing I've come to detest through all the time I've spent reading and writing, it is people who make a big deal of of spending time "interpreting" and "appraising" creative works of art rather than simply enjoying the experience.

To me, that usually ends in something that's the very height of pretension and self-absorption where said person tries to inject their own subjective ideas of what is important into the core of someone elses work, often presented as objective truth, or at least insinuated to be the truth.

Source: def'n.

> Whimsical and heartfelt? I say arbitrary and jejune.

Weird, since taste is entirely objective and everyone almost always agrees about art.

There's a difference between the whimsical, the surreal, the colorful as a method of misleading or distracting or revealing things which cannot be said more directly, and pretension.

Feel free to think that your own criticisms of this work stem from some objective place wherein your appraisal is accurate and valid, but it seems there are members of this community also weathered in art and art criticism who think this is a valid, provocative, even moving body of writing.

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