My response to "From Mere Engineer to True Artist"

Created on 2024-04-11 15:28

Published on 2024-04-11 18:58

Codecamp Timisoara took place today, and it was quite a nice conference. The lineup was top-notch, and the topics were quite diverse. There were also some talks that seemed overly specialized, possibly requested by sponsors, but overall, it was quite an entertaining edition.

James Coplien delivered an interesting talk called "From Mere Engineer to True Artist" at the end. Coplien is known for stating unpleasant truths, and this is okay; it provides food for thought.

He pointed out many elephants in the room somewhat bluntly, but radical candor is necessary to shake up the industry. However, some of his assertions today were not entirely true, as there are many nuances that I struggle with.

• What are architects? Everybody is an architect; there is nothing to argue about here. At a certain scale, architecture is present in every detail of the field; every commit is an architectural decision. However, the title "architect" carries more implications. The term "architect" originates from the Greek ἀρχιτέκτων (archi - first/over, techton - builder/mason). Architects were defined by Vitruvius as mediators, experienced workers able to mitigate stakeholders' needs. Architects have scars from previous battles and failed buildings, which gives them another "unnamed quality" of being able to steer and communicate to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

• The lack of importance of a "4-year CS degree" and the notion that "CS is not a science/engineering." I completely disagree. In my view, CS is a science, residing somewhere between a branch of mathematics, a cornerstone of electrical engineering, a niche of quantum physics, and a domain of philosophy, yet with some fundamental ideas of its own. Of course, talent and hard work can compensate for formal education, but formal CS studies help evolve it from a craft to an engineering discipline by incorporating the feedback of countless generations of practitioners, creating something as solid as civil or chemical engineering. Maybe CS is not a true science yet, but it is at least "science in the making", gaining substance year after year. A 1-year boot camp could theoretically create good programmers but not scientists or engineers. The graduates of these boot camps could be productive, but they would mostly align with the 90% that Coplien fears will disappear, especially if their motives for choosing CS as a profession are not fueled by passion and continuous learning. He argued that kids can create software. True, they can create impressive things from a young age, but sometimes their creations are naive, functional indeed but lacking the details that a seasoned practitioner would add — details that provide an edge in terms of usability, performance, and quality. Kid's creations, even if not completely abstract are full of abstractions

Unicorn drawn by a kid

vs.

Unicorn drawn by a professional

Coplien argued that Renaissance architects who delivered value had no architectural studies; still, they created wonderful buildings. In my opinion, it was not necessary at that point in time, as during that period, the arts and crafts were mostly similar, and practitioners were genuine polymaths.

• Commissioned work: Most of the examples of great architecture he presented (Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, da Vinci) worked on commissioned buildings. The artists worked at the order of a sponsor, as artists are often poor, in need of money. There are just a few self-sustained artists, mostly in the 20th century, who were able to market themselves so that they could create at their own will. Even these exceptions had to do commissioned work at the beginning until they were able to create independently. Starchitects like Oscar Niemeyer created "commissioned works of art" - for example, the city of Brasilia. It was their genius that transformed a mundane request into an unforgettable work of art, but they did not initiate the project themselves with their own funds.

• Abstractions are bad: Again, I do not agree. Abstractions are the foundation of science and art. If we observe the evolution of Picasso's bull, we see it goes from concrete to abstract, refining the shape to its bare essence. There is nothing that one can take out from the last image and still have a bull. Abstractions create flexibility, a quality that permits evolution. If we abandon abstractions, modern art would still resemble the bucolic style of the 16th century, and software would still be in Fortran dialects. Functional programming and object-oriented programming are based on abstract concepts that allow them to express real-world problems in an understandable manner and create higher-order simplifications of the problem at hand.

• Beautiful code: With some references to Christopher Alexander's "unnamed quality," Coplien wants us to deliver beauty. The problem lies in how he characterizes beauty. His aesthetic criteria are vague. Beautiful code is not only visually appealing; what if we cannot see? Perhaps one has a test-sensing organ that is sensitive to testable code and code with a lot of tests - a testable flower and its petals. We all strive to write beautiful code, even in suboptimal languages, but let's be honest - we do what we can to meet our deadlines. Maybe we write truly beautiful code once or twice in our careers, but often, we write code that brings value. Value can be delivered not only by ethereal, elegantly crafted code but also by solid, practical code. While he advocates for the axiom of delivering value first, his subsequent request for beauty is in stark contradiction.