On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 08:31:47PM +0000, Glenn Strong wrote:
It'd be better to compare programming to writing a novel, a more familiar concept.
Yeah, I thought about that but I wondered how it would sound to a non-programmer. Perhaps a point could be made distinguishing commercial programming from hacking for fun and likening it to the distinction between commercial writing and, say, novel writing or poetry but I wasn't sure it would actually make the paragraph more coherent. Give it a go, though!
Paul Graham does a good job comparing programming with art creation in his essay "Hackers & Painters". He's pretty articulate, it might be a nice source of nice analogies and metaphors.
For those who haven't read it: http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html