Shrini, thanks for your always critic thoughts.You put some phrasing that is not my own, if you read carefully my post you see I say:
"engineering is also a form of art, in what relates to creativity, beauty and emotion drive"
and
"Every piece of software we create [...], has a beauty that will echo [...]"
which is not the same as saying:
"all engineernig is art" (typo kept)
but I get your idea, so I will try to explain a little better.
I think there is a continuum between the two extremes: the complete mechanical process (call it automated, or automatic) and the human or artistic process.
Take some examples:
On a painting, for example, there is a large amount of work that is technical, like the materials, inks, brushes and the painting technique itself. There is also a lot that is conceptual, emotional, artistic.
On a musical instrument same applies: technique, sound engineering, scales, arpegios, etc are ideally automated "under the fingers", so that our mind can search more musical ideas.
So these activities, although traditionally from the "art" field, often consist of 90% of mechanics and 10% of art, if you know what I mean.
Now for the field of engineering:
-Suppose my job is to test a piece of software.I will get to know the business context, so I can explore some useful scenarios - just a painter will focus on a theme and explore it;I will place myself on a end-user position, try to see what means value to this product - just as an artist who is constantly evaluating his workSometimes I will complain because the GUI does not communicate the idea I think it should, thus misleading the user - sometimes music fails to communicate, doesn't "click", as well.
So, just to resume my point, I don't think "everything is art", but instead that we can learn a lot if we see the processes that are traditionally not artistic, through an "art lens". Particularly through the use of metaphors, that are everywhere in art, but also in software (for example, a button is a metaphore for an action. Sometimes the button is there only so we can notice we can do something)
This said, I would like to add that we cannot separate the artistic individual from the practical individual inside each one of us, although we use in different moments one or the other (some say it is located in different zones of the brain...)
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
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