The Arts as a theme for a programmers conference. Are we out of our minds? Are we just provocative?

Jakob Wolman from the program committee came with the idea of this year’s theme, the Arts. Thank you Jakob!

Someone asked me :”how are you going to tie this theme with programming?”. But it took no time before a lot of interesting questions popped up into my mind: Is programming an Art? Are programmers artists, scientists, craftmen? Then came the other questions, such as; are there platforms and languages allowing developers to be more creative? Can you really feel like an artist when you work in a team of 25 persons???
Paul Graham few years ago, wrote an interesting book called “Hackers and painters” which is a collection of essays discussing hacking, programming languages, and many other technological issues. In one essay, he draws a parallel between the work of hackers and painters and finds many similarities bringing him to the conclusion that hackers are like painters!

“Hackers need to understand the theory of computation about as much as painters need to understand paint chemistry. You need to know how to calculate time and space complexity and about Turing completeness. You might also want to remember at least the concept of a state machine, in case you have to write a parser or a regular expression library. Painters in fact have to remember a good deal more about paint chemistry than that.”

“I was taught in college that one ought to figure out a program completely on paper before even going near a computer. I found that I did not program this way. I found that I liked to program sitting in front of a computer, not a piece of paper. Worse still, instead of patiently writing out a complete program and assuring myself it was correct, I tended to just spew out code that was hopelessly broken, and gradually beat it into shape. Debugging, I was taught, was a kind of final pass where you caught typos and oversights. The way I worked, it seemed like programming consisted of debugging.”

Far from everyone agrees on this. Anders Janmyr also member of the program committee found a funny blog post from idlewords.com giving a colourful opinion on Paul Graham essay, here are few extracts:

“So let me say it simply - hackers are nothing like painters.”

“Computer programmers cause a machine to perform a sequence of
 transformations on electronically stored data.”

“Painters apply colored goo to cloth using animal hairs tied to a stick.”

“The reason Graham's essay isn't entitled "Hackers and Pastry Chefs" is
not because there is something that unites painters and programmers
into a secret brotherhood, but because Paul Graham likes to cultivate
the arty aura that comes from working in the visual arts.”

“Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer
programs never do. Even not-so-great paintings - in fact, any slapdash
attempt at splashing paint onto a surface - will get you laid more than
writing software, especially if you have the slightest hint of being a
tortured, brooding soul about you. For evidence of this I would point to
my college classmate Henning, who was a Swedish double art/theatre
major and on most days could barely walk.”

And it’s why we like this year’s theme, because we know and we hope it will provoke a lot of discussions, reflections, emotions.

Here is another article speaking of coding as art. We like this article because it features the opinions of speakers who already attended Øredev.

So Yes. We think this is the best theme ever. It will tickle your brain, it will provoke you and certainly it will inspire your creative mind!

Emily, Creative Conference Manager