Take Emacs, my favorite text editor, for example. It has tons of these small refinements. Suppose you decide to replace "xyz" with "xen ya zen". During the search/replace if it encounters "XYZ", it will replace it with "XEN YA ZEN", and if "Xyz" then "Xen ya zen". Pretty nifty.
And then there is an "Artist Mode" in Emacs that allows users to draw ASCII art. When lines intersect each other, the code takes care to replace the intersection points with either X or +, as the case may be.
Gmail has this feature that tells you that the mail was sent, for example, "11 hours ago", that is more valuable and useful information than the DD-MM-YYYY HH:MM +OFFSET format followed elsewhere.
In Inkscape, an open source vector drawing program, that I occasionally use, copying and pasting a object has a feature I wonder why no other such program has (or if they have, why haven't I discovered it yet?). After you copy and paste, most programs will paste the object either:
- On top of the object you copied or,
- In some random location.
These features are not likely to be highlighted in advertising material for the program. Then why do programmers spend so much time coding these features? Agreed, some of these features are trivial to implement, but that's not always true for others (Emacs).
We had a lesson/text in school that probably explains this best. During the construction of a big and grand temple, a visitor finds one of the sculptors hard at work in one of the darkest corners, where no sunlight will ever illuminate the sculptor's work. "Why?" asks the visitor of the sculptor, "are you pouring so much work into something no one will ever see?"
"He will see," answers the sculptor, pointing to where the diety will be installed.
We computer programmers do not believe God uses our programs, but it shows how passionate both these types of artists are. They do not want beauty that is only skin deep, but one that survives even the most piercing glance. May their tribe live on!
2 comments:
Their tribe will certainly live on. Whether one believes or not, GOD is there (its just a matter of the individual's 'belief'). HE, Himself, has said in the 'Gita' that every effort counts and none goes waste, both positive and negative.
Thanks! Finally someone who acknowledges programming as an activity working at the same level as art. I think these programs have all these hidden features that are very useful because they were primarily written for their author's own use (particularly Emacs), and that's what gives them that edge. Like I read recently, "Don't be afraid to scratch your own itches. Because you will discover that a lot many people have the same itch too."
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