In Vikram Chandra’s eyes, programming’s a lot like penning a piece:
When I first started programming, I was already writing my first novel, and the similarities became obvious right away: Both are iterative processes in which you construct bits of language and try to refine them; you try to construct complexity out of assemblages of small, simple bits of functionality. But I’m wary of pushing the comparison too far. What you’re trying to do with language in literature is very different from what you do in code, and the mental processes that produce each kind of language are very different and specific to the task.
Tobias Carroll gives us more over at Ozy: Chandra also hits on stability in language, architecture in story, and the fictive empathy geeks bring to the table.
