Lime Bar @limebar@mastodon.social
I am a little shocked at the lack of solidarity I see between artists working in different mediums wrt genAI.
Musicians who would never use it to make music use it to make cover art
Graphic artists reach for it to make music over their videos
Writers use it to illustrate their articles
And, considering software development an art, many use it to create web sites or apps to host their art.
None of this is necessary. All of this is harmful to the other artists.
Collaborate ffs.
Stop it.
Aug 09, 2026, 12:17 AM
I'm just going to take a moment to appreciate that they considered software development an art. It's a rare moment.
It's funny how many non-programmers see programming as a repetitive and boring task.. Like, the whole point of it is to take boring repetitive tasks and automate them away. And the bits that are really well understood are the bits you don't need to deal with, because there's already libraries for that. Definitely an art (or a craft at least).
Same to mathematics then again the relationship most people have with math is a far cry from the hopefully ingenious, and creative labor of what mathematicians do. Most just remember suffering to learn rules discovered by others and themselves never getting the chance to do the discovering.
I love maths, did a major in it (plus a summer project). But its also one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I never did anything that felt remotely like discovery or like creativity (though I agree it is creative). It's in a league of it's own in terms of dedication required, IMO.
What branch of math did you study (assuming you got a graduate degree)? I was more so in CS so had a heavy discrete math background. I particularly love graph theory. I think with applied math in CS you're often asked to do something new-ish with designing algorithms. That said I also didn't discover anything.
It was in a science degree, so I could just choose any topics, as long as they were at the right level. I think third year I did topology and number theory, and a mix of stuff in lower years.
One of my favourite things is to watch a programmer wax poetic about the beauty they see in good code.
It tangentially reminds me of "clocking screws", a practice in which one screws in flathead screws such that the slots are all aligned . It's easy to do, but a lot of faff; manufacturing variances means that each screw will require a slightly different number of turns to be sufficiently tight, so you need to:
" Line up the screw so the slot is aligned vertically
It takes a lot of skill to reliably gauge how to do, especially because repeated screwing and unscrewing the screw can loosen the hole enough that it affects the process. Even for skilled craftsmen, it's an absurd level of work for something that, even when flathead screws were more common, most people would never notice. Nowadays, the only place I'm likely to see clockable screws are at old churches or similar
It's so persnickety and silly, but that's why I love it. I imagine that the craftspeople who care(d) about this stuff were a lot like today's programmers who wax poetic about elegance in their code. It makes me so happy whenever I peer underneath a century old pew and see clocked screws, because it makes me think about the person who put such care into a part of their work that next to no-one would even see, let alone appreciate. It is especially nice because I imagine that many of these craftspeople were of a socioeconomic class that were thought unable to appreciate Beauty and Art.
No matter the field, people will find ways to impart Beauty and Art into their craft.
Hah, for sure, that's crazy, and I'd never be bothers, but I'd be very impressed of I saw someone else do it!
It's funny how many programmers see it the same way. Actually bugs the shit outta me, haha.