I really appreciated this chapter’s focus on deciphering between programming as a tool versus programming as a design medium. On page 163, Artful Design relates ‘lines of code’ to ‘sentences in a book.’ While the book is implying that lines of codes are foundational building blocks in a project, this point reminded me of one of my favorite aspects of making: writing and editing essays. I was really involved in my high school newspaper, and as one progressed through staff, you graduated from being a writer into an editor. The most creative parts of my brain were access when I had a red pen in hand – taking apart sentences, circling verbs to come back to, and thinking about the entire structure of an essay. I dove into the micro – each sentence, each word– and took a step back to think about the entire piece as a structure. Writing for me was my original form of making and still is. The editing process is really beautiful and something I have not gotten back into in a long time. As an undergraduate, I put a lot of care into my writing and perfected it. At the end of my writing session, I would change the size and font of my Microsoft Word document and re-read my writing with this new perspective. This experience really helps me understand ‘coding as a design medium.’ It actually makes me want to dive back into writing in a more careful, thoughtful, and design-oriented way.
This chapter helped me broaden my definition of crafts or mediums that design can be applied to. Programming can be a design medium, and so can sound. Sound and audio in combination can be a medium as well.
On page 166, the chapter references Jean-Clause Risset’s quote comparing a computer to a workshop. I appreciated this connection a lot – we often call computers “tools”, but a tool is transactional. A workshop is a space, and within that space, one grows, changes, and makes. The space holds experiences, longevity, and a culture that a tool simply does not. Just as a kitchen or a makerspace is a workshop, a knife or a lathe are just tools. As the chapter evolves, Ge explains how truly creative programming is. For me, I programmed minimally as an undergraduate – to create websites and to carry out statistics and econometrics problem sets. It was eye-opening to re-frame programming as a creative endeavor. Silicon Valley often portrays programming as a very stagnant and bland field, but it is really beautiful when you realize that programming is as creative process that can be used to develop creative and beautiful products. This class has fundamentally changed the way I listen to music and think about sounds. I listen to music as a narrative that was designed in a certain way – rather than a collection of sounds in the background.