pouët.net

been thinking about how heavy programming experience influences your writing skills of short stories / novels.

on one hand programming experience is supposed to help you organize and plan things abit better, which should come in handy for deciding the structure of writing and such.

on the other hand i can't but shake the feeling that coders typically write either in overly parallel (covering too many topics being put through at once, trampling their own line of thought/writing topic) or overly linear (following a straight path towards one specific topic, which might actually either end up boring as hell or, when the person loses focus on the topic at hand, derailing from the original structure planned).

thoughts?

I don't think I could write a novel or short story, but I can barely program anyway.

i also don't think knoeki could write a novel or a short story.

I think the parallel / serial nature isn't really a problem when it comes to writing, the fact that programmers tend to think concise and optimal might be - no coder will bother writing you exposition :D

"If you remove that paragraph, the chapter will speed up 10 secs for the average reader!"

It really depends on what kind of person you are. I know I'm obsessed with writing good code that follows certain structures and does certain things in a certain way, but to me life is bigger than that, so when I write it is certainly not to please some kind of fictional gods of regularity.

I tend to write faster text to read, with correct identation, et al.

I write everything reverse polish-style

This is interesting.

"no coder will bother writing you exposition"

Considering how many writers give one TOO much exposition, this might not be bad.

Readers of genre fiction and period fiction are also often used to inferring a world from information given.

Also, only too perfect for this thread is Inform 7, a plain English programming language for interactive fiction
http://inform7.com/

I love the error messages, because even when they're unhelpful, they're pleasingly snarky.

Where game design and writing cross paths, there'll you'll find programmers writing. e.g. http://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html

I think writing and programming are two separate skills independent of each other. Being a good programmer does not make you a good writer and of course neither the other way round. Of course this does not mean that there are no people who are skilled at both things (like me).

...

yes Adok, your articles in Hugi reminds me of a young Dostojevsky, whereas your coding is more on the likes of a mature Allan Turing.

haha, i was thinking of something along that line too :-)

My writing is too parallel as you might have guessed, though the structure of my code is already much better already than what my writing will ever be, since I think I spend more time than in the past to write good organized code. I haven't learned to do the same with writing, possibly because I didn't care or the real life issues I am writing about are much more complicated or uncertain.

coding is form of a language. like programming-languages. there's a reason why they are called languages. don't think you would be a better novellist by knowing how to code. altho as thread-started said iirc you'd be better at structuring things. but, i wouldnt think you would think in that same way by writing a novel or something. i dont think its best to combine those two things, because writing a novel is more of a flow-like process than coding which is kinda logical and consistent. everyone have their own writing style to express their feelings, thoughts, messages, ideas and intentions etc. today's programming languages doesnt have that same linguistic style of things, except for what they try to do in wolfram-alpha, but i still don't think they're there yet. i dunno.

i write stuff for about 20 years. i did poems, many short stories and some novels. i had a break in coding for about 15 years. dunno really why. matter of fact: writing did not help me to make better code after restarting :D so i don't see any chance, that it will be helpful the other way. writing and coding are two different things you just can't compare imho.

optimus, sounds like the beginning of maybe a great novel ;) like with a good demo, you need content, though, which is as important as the technique being used, however good it is.
rudi, yes, we call both language, and you have grammar and such, but remember that the first computers werent programmed using a language, but cables and switches or hardwired even. both is descriptive, but natural language is far from having a set of defined rules. rather open to interpretation often times. just look at a law book, its awful, would be really nice if laws were more deterministic.
if it comes to writing, i often find myself struggling for meaningful variable-names.

not the same and actually mutually exclusive. they may both be languages, but they have two totally different targets "machines"; one a human and the other a simplistic man-made machine. most people proficient in cold logic programming would probably make the worst creative writers, imo.

reading logic is hard work for 99.9% of humans, reading and interpreting the intellectual and emotional cues within a well written story is effortless. we can communicate well with computers using logic but it's impossible using emotion.

we are not machines ps!

I think we can all agree that Adok is an asset not just to the demoscene, but the world at large.

*less deterministic

button, the fact that the word logic itself originated from λόγος (logos) (as in written or spoken thought/word) is quite ironic.
also creativity is useless without logik or vice versa, as i already said. so, the question is, are you a good coder without creativity in your work, just assembling algorithms? maybe! but are you a good programmer?

vectory: exactly what you said about cables, switches etc I really didnt grasp, so you'd have to put it into better words or be a little more specific about what you where trying to say about that in the context of what we're talking about. as a continuation we call it programming languages because we (the humans) are able to read it and interpret it, so that we know what its going to do / whats going to happen next etc. in the early era of computers, to make it easier for the programmer to remember machine language, assembly language where invented so that one could use mnemonics instead of pure machine language (which is a very tough language - its very hard to remember their architectural uses - some did (or had to) do it back then though). you could say using wires, cables, switches or whatever is kind of a language, exactly the same as mathematics is a language. in its smallest form its kind of a discreet language since it all goes back into 2^x binary mathematically form language. if you want to move for example a byte into the accumulator you prefer using a high-level language or mov ax, <some number> instead of plotting into the bits. if you where to use the wired case you where referring to, you'd prefer having to look up a down written paper (or whatever) the theory about their uses.

Just to help out the scene, if you ARE a writer, and want to make some money, check out www.jottify.com .

rudi, i think you understood me alright. i was talking about non turing complete computers like the eniac. i was trying to say, writing in one language doesnt make you a good writer of another language, if the languages arent reasonably related.
i agree on
[q]you could say using wires, cables, switches or whatever is kind of a language, exactly the same as mathematics is a language.[/q].
a comparison with natural languages, seems arkward, though. i guess, that isnt what psenough was refering to, but the question was posed in a general way, like it was begging for me to give my 2¢ :)