Me han entrevistado para galiciaexterior
La entrevista puede leerse aquí. No entiendo muy bien ni el cómo ni el porqué, pero así ha sido.
La entrevista se hizo por email (como se puede notar en lo mucho que me explayo), por lo que la tengo también escrita a LaTeX. Sin embargo, después de haber hecho sufrir a Javier con mis parrafadas, que menos que mandarle todo el amor que pueda, por lo que no voy a publicar mi habitual PDF.
Lo comento porque el corte editorial ha cambiado ligeramente la puntuación (e.g., disolviendo algunos paréntesis, dos-puntos y puntos-y-coma) y la estructuración de algunos párrafos, y ha cercenado dos notas al pie (que tampoco aportaban mucho, la verdad), algunos "xd" (¡qué difícil es tomarse en serio a uno mismo!), alguna frase socarrona que estaba de más y todas mis cursivas. Así que, si algún lector asiduo nota que es algo más legible de lo habitual, dele las gracias a Javier.
PS. La cita de Knuth completa era:
«My feeling is that when we prepare a program, it can be like composing poetry or music; as Andrei Ershov has said [9], programming can give us both intellectual and emotional satisfaction, because it is a real achievement to master complexity and to establish a system of consistent rules.
Furthermore when we read other people's programs, we can recognize some of them as genuine works of art. I can still remember the great thrill it was for me to read the listing of Stan Poley's SOAP II assembly 670 program in 1958 [lo que me recuerda a la descripción de Steven Strogatz para 3b1b del Goursat’s proof for Cauchy’s Integral Theorem, https://www.math.uh.edu/~shanyuji/Complex/complex-1/cx-24-online.pdf]; you probably think I'm crazy, and styles have certainly changed greatly since then, but at the time it meant a great deal to me to see how elegant a system program could be, especially by comparison with the heavy-handed coding found in other listings I had been studying at the same time. The possibility of writing beautiful programs, even in assembly language, is what got me hooked on programming in the first place.
[...] The moral of this story, it seems to me, is that we should make use of the idea of limited resources in our own education. We can all benefit by doing occasional "toy" programs [como ocurre en el code golf, los lenguajes de programación esotericos como Malbolge o la Demoscene, que me recuerdan a la OuLiPo], when artificial restrictions are set up, so that we are forced to push our abilities to the limit. We shouldn't live in the lap of luxury all the time, since that tends to make us lethargic. The art of tackling miniproblems with all our energy will sharpen our talents for the real problems, and the experience will help us to get more pleasure from our accomplishments on less restricted equipment.
In a similar vein, we shouldn't shy away from "art for art's sake"; we shouldn't feel guilty about programs that are just for fun. [...]
Consider the "trapped housewife" who has to clean off the same table every day: there's not room for creativity or artistry in every situation. But even in such cases, there is a way to make a big improvement: it is still a pleasure to do routine jobs if we have beautiful things to work with. For example, a person will really enjoy wiping off the dining room table, day after day, if it is a beautifully designed ruble made from some fine quality hardwood.»
Computer Programming as an Art 1974 (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/361604.361612)
PS. Sobre la desconexión del PC, comparto algunas referencias:
Clark y Chalmers The extended mind 1998
David Eagleman Why the Net Matters: How the Internet Will Save Civilization 2011
Benjamin Wittes & Jane Chong Our Cyborg Future: Law and Policy Implications 2014
Santiago Alba Rico Ser o no ser (un cuerpo) 2017.
PS. Sobre el sesgo del superviviente, aunque la referencia clásica en la que estaba pensado era André Gorz Critique of Economic Reason 1988, comparto algunas otras:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc4gp2woilI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6egT4fddFc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCOX_0fxkGg
PS. Sobre la vida ermitaña:
"As you have seen, I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within." Eudora Welty One Writer's Beginnings 1984, último parrafo de su autobiografia.
PS. Sobre el fatalismo generacional, cf. cuellilargo. La generación de cristal (youtube)
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario
El pudor es un estigma social: descuartizame, y mis manos resquebrajadas te aplaudirn.