Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.
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@mjg59 One difference I see is that when I implement (myself, with my own limited brain) my idea (or somebody else's idea for that matter), I actually learn something about the said idea, it becomes more precise in my head. Also, it makes me have other ideas.
Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.
I see what you're saying but also restructuring or making major changes to a novel *does* remind me of refactoring code. I think that's the part of coding that feels most like fiction writing to me - the editing.
I'm a full-time professional novelist. Have been for 25 years. Before that I was a software dev. From the inside, the cognitive experiences of writing prose fiction and writing software *feel identical*. The creativity exists outside the words, and most of the phrases and grammar I use are unoriginal.
Ball's back in your court.
@cstross For me, they use the same machinery in incompatible ways: after a couple weeks’ intense coding, I could barely write a coherent sentence. (Perhaps) despite that, I fully agree that the processes feel identical; I just can’t do them at a high level too close together.
@cstross Ok that's interesting and does make me reappraise my position. I don't write for a living, but I spend a great deal more time thinking about choice of words than I do about choice of idiom in whatever language I'm coding in. The number of ways I can reasonably convey "modify this register" to a C compiler is extremely small, the number of ways I could describe it to a human is massive.
phew, not sure (!!!)
What if the variable is a cursor in Marx Capital or Orwell 1984?
Or both?
And what would Jesus have done?
(Yes ok there are cases where code is beauty and embodies an idea that could make a grown man cry and:
(1) your code is not that code
(2) you would think nothing of copying the creative aspect of that code if you needed to don't fucking lie to me)
Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!
