Reading Response 4

Elisse Chow | October 22, 2023

> Principle 4.1 Programming is a creative endeavor.

I don't exactly know why this principle is making me feel so much, but at the time of writing this, I was tearing up a little in the middle of a Starbucks. Well, actually—I think I have some level of understanding and I'll try to talk through it in my response.

Going back to the start of it all, my programming experience was on my TI-84 calculator in middle school. I would spend hours graphing sets of polar functions in the form of flowers coming together across the screen. It was a still image in the end, but beautiful in that the calculator would take its time to graph out the curves, revealing more and more of its form. This obsession with math, and its beauty continues to this day, as evident with my design for Homework #2. At this point, I've incorporated these functions in so many of my projects whether it was laser cut, 3D printed, drawn with a graphing app, Python, Processing and now in ChuGL. Music and sound was sprinkled into these projects along the way, using the volume of the input to drive the scale of the radius, but never before have I worked with polar graphs and the FFT into the same design. This project, this class have made me feel so fulfilled. I really do feel that programming is a creative endeavor as the principle states, and I'm so thankful that I've come back to a CCRMA class held in person at the Knoll. I took MUSIC15N in Fall 2020 with Jonathan Berger when we were online).

With that all said, I think this class has also made me a lot more uncertain about my future. As a senior that's graduating this year, I'm looking for New Grad SWE positions. I'm still unsure exactly what type of SWE work I'm looking for, and realistically how much I want to incorporate my graphics background into my career. I think I'm conflicted between having good opportunities in the work that I enjoy versus my personal projects that I love. I'm uncertain about my whole trajectory as a CS major and it is definitely hard that the industry I hope to go into has been hit so hard. But while this class has made me re-question these things, I also really appreciate how the space has been designed, and the freedom we have been given to express ourselves through our work. In the stress of the job search, it is such a relief to have a class that encourages and enforces creativity through programming and brings me so much joy. Maybe this is all why I started tearing up.

Some links!
Basic Audio Visualizer: ec-cssi-sound.glitch.me
Flower with Polar Equations: www.desmos.com/calculator/a3pnnkm6yt
Animated Polar Flower: www.desmos.com/calculator/amlviisw07