TITLE: Thoughts for Programmers from "Stay on the Bus" AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: March 18, 2016 9:58 AM DESC: ----- BODY: Somehow, I recently came across a link to Stay on the Bus, an excerpt from a commencement speech Arno Rafael Minkkinen gave at the New England School of Photography in June 2004. It is also titled "The Helsinki Bus Station Theory: Finding Your Own Vision in Photography". I almost always enjoy reading the thoughts of an artist on his or her own art, and this was no exception. I also usually hear echoes of what I feel about my own arts and avocations. Here are three.
What happens inside your mind can happen inside a camera.
This is one of the great things about any art. What happens inside your mind can happen in a piano, on a canvas, or in a poem. When people find the art that channels their mind best, beautiful things -- and lives -- can happen. One of the things I like about programming is that is really a meta-art. Whatever happens in your mind can happen inside a camera, inside a piano, on a canvas, or in a poem. Yet whatever happens inside a camera, inside a piano, or on a canvas can happen inside a computer, in the form of a program. Computing is a new medium for experimenting, simulating, and creating.
Teachers who say, "Oh, it's just student work," should maybe think twice about teaching.
Amen. There is no such thing as student work. It's the work our students are ready to make at a particular moment in time. My students are thinking interesting thoughts and doing their best to make something that reflects those thoughts. Each program, each course in their study is a step along a path. All work is student work. It's just that some of us students are at a different point along our paths.
Georges Braque has said that out of limited means, new forms emerge. I say, we find out what we will do by knowing what we will not do.
This made me think of an entry I wrote many years ago, Patterns as a Source of Freedom. Artists understand better than programmers sometimes that subordinating to a form does not limit creativity; it unleashes it. I love Minkkinen's way of saying this: we find out what we will do by knowing what we will not do. In programming as in art, it is important to ask oneself, "What will I not do?" This is how we discover we will do, what we can do, and even what we must do. Those are a few of the ideas that stood out to me as I read Minkkinen's address. The Helsinki Bus Station Theory is a useful story, too. -----