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Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Writing software 

scottraymondnet
A well-written program precisely conforms to the shape of its problem space, the way a key fits the shape of a lock, no more and no less. And you see it, and it is good.

I suppose the dual satisfaction, from the utility and the aesthetic balance of a creation, happens in lots of engineering disciplines. But I suspect that it’s more common in writing software, because computers provide something close to a perfectly closed world: everything is malliable, every state is discrete, every object is abstract ... Come to think of it, that’s probably the same reason that mathematics is satisfying, at least for those who are able to reach a level where they can be creative with math.


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