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CSS Essays : The Ultimate Innovative Programmer : "Distinct Advantages of an Artist Turned Programmer"
or "Creative Web Designer as 'Super-Creative' Web Developer : A New Model for the Future"
No matter how you slice and dice it in the web business and computer world, most of us are truly great at only one of two things.....either total left-brain, logical hard core programming and application development, or the free spirit, innovative and creative powerful artistic digital artists. We are just 'programmed' that way I guess. Most of us will be drawn, like a moth to the flame, to one (not both) of these practices at some point in our career. And that choice, in general, defines us as either a programmer who "builds" or an artists who "create". As someone who has and is truly doing both practices actively everyday now, and growing both sides of those skillsets *designer and developer), I can safely say that there are distinct advantages I now feel, to being a truly creative, and innovative soul, yet applying that creativity to purely programmic logic and architecture as a hard core developer in the web industry, now that Im moving with full force into this more left brain field. More on that later, but I hear some arguments coming my way from the crowd......
Already I can see feel the tension in the room, as nearly all of you out there in the web world are now yelling, "Wait a minute Mitch, I can do both! I have built really interesting and colorful website designs AND done some dynamic web page back-end work!" Others will say, "yea, I dont draw, but anyone can hack together a jpeg, or a style sheet, or Flash animation or website. Its not rocket science!" And finally, you web artists multimedia specialists are chiming in with, "...yea, Im a multuimedia artist and web designer, but I can do Flash Actionscript, and javascript and dhtml with the best of them! Im both an artist and a developer".
Well.....first let me say, Im sorry, but your idea that you are doing both practices is not totally true, and is most likely, not what Im describing. And second, just because you can do both has little bearing on what Im saying in this article, except those rare peopl who have the wisdom and power to incorproate the two disciplines into each other to create a new and more powerful approach in both. To jump ahead on that subject, artists seem to make better developers and have more innovative power and intuitive organizational and innovative skills than most pure programmers out there. I do feel that purely left brain programmers who claim to avoid all creativity period make extremely "knowledgable" programmers, but that has very little to do with truly innovative thought, meaning, creating usable and bug free innovative software. Why is this so? Ill explain. But first to the issue as to why most people are not both artists and programmers, and what defines this new breed of IT person Im describing in this article.
Here is my point on people who claim to have acquired multiple disciplines and skills: If I were to dig ditches for a living, and become the best ditch digger out there, then in my spare time happen to enjoy basketweaving, would you claim I make my living weaving baskets and digging distches? No! Im a professional ditch digger and basket weaving is a "hobby" or interest or specialty of mine. Maybe I go to market with basket weaving and sell my designs. And as time goes on, I find basket weaving takes more of my time so I do the ditches part-time, and now building baskets most of the week, selling them online, and now in full transition in my career towards turning my "new passion" into a career. Would you say Im a good ditch digger and good weaver still. Maybe. But would you say Im a professional ditch digger and weaver. No, still no. Why? Because Im not incorporating either together, but "changing" careers and moving to into basket weaving.....the two are not related, and I earn my living at what I earn my living at. If I was one of those very special and rare time managemnet people with a vision, then maybe and I say maybe, I could build a new business combining the two, where using innovative powers, use baskets to inspire me to build a better ditch digger made of woven metal strips which I call "the basket" and suddenly I have a new company based on both passions, to a degree, and that makes me unique and very special, and very rare, to boot!
Sure, maybe you are saying, so what! But it matters....and matter big time in how you and I define ourselves in the technology world. Have I met allot of designers that get turned on by databases and SQL. Yea maybe one or two. Have I met artists who can code in Flash and ASP or PHP? Yea, maybe a few. Have I met programmers who did a decent job at building pretty little icons for their web administration programs. Yes, sure. But are any of those people sufficient in power and skill and career ability to claim they are fully programmers and designers? No....think hard about it and you too will see, you are one or the other! You either build Windows Applications or you are preocuupied everyday with good photography and web design techniques. You are either playing with XML parsers and .NET objects on a daily basis or you are testing and playing with truly cross-browser style sheet code and jpeg compressiona nd Photoshop filters everyday. For this reason, MOST of us are great at one, and if we are lucky, good at a specialty, but very rarely both. Thats just the reality of who we are as IT folk, and though we can switch teams and do often as we design and develop, most of us are really left or right brain people.
Now, back to my original article. I was stating that there is a new type of programmer out there, and that the Ultimate Programmer is one who has the "soul of an artist" and the organizational mind of a programmer. Do we all have some of that? Of course. But most of us suffer from a lack of "resources" inside to be both and utilize both to create this new breed of programmer. Again, just because you know Photoshop or can design T-shirts, doesnt mean you have the soul of an artists or a "creator". Almost all the creative people Ive ever knowm are painters, writers, and musicians. Programming and conditional loops is something they CAN do but generally avoid. Why? Its not their passion....plain and simple. Pure unbridled creative force using that great untapped and unknown world inside us, is generally only something that only true artist knows how to use to their advantage. They get pleasure from creating...period....taking a blank canvas and creating beauty from nothingness! Programming has some of that but its not the same. All the arists I know who have that creative passion, despite some programming abilities, suffer from the inability to "appreciate" code, or appreciate good logic. Thats a fact! And how they approach that is usually either very disorganized, or what I call the "shot gun" approach....and that translates to, "if it sticks it sticks, and dont change it!". In other words, programming is about getting to a point where you get something working, and so you can get back to designing.
Now, allot of people rightly claim that prgramming is a very creative process. As a person who is an artist, hard core, and yetr a programmer, hard core, I can see and feel the creative process....the art of programming and the ability to "craft" continency designs and programs that do things well. But unfortunately, Ive yet to meet a Windows or C# or .NET programmer that truly cares about how their code looks or is organized or works, beyond the fact it works well and solves the problems at hand for their clients. Sorry, thats a fact! Most of the really knowledgable programmers seem to have compeltly and utterly missed that side of programming...the ability to see balanced structures of code blocks, and planning code for future growth, or architecting solutions that are corrcetly balanced in performance, database design, and especially for USABILITY BY THE VERY CLIENTS THAT USE THEIR SOFTWARE, which incidentally, is the most shocking thing Ive discovered about programmers. Most design brilliant and amazing solutions most of us would NEVER conceive of, but that has next to NOTHING to do with "good code" that truly is "innovative and beautifully crafted" such that its performance and utility goes beyond its immediate solution-solving abilities. For most programmers, creating the code is creative, BUT only in terms of solving the immediate problem....not past problems necessarily, future problems, often without contingency goals in mind, and sadly with very very poor consideration of the users who will interface with their software. Thats NOT A COSMETIC ISSUE Im talking about....its a TOTAL INNOVATIVE SOLUTION shortfall, and its the main reason why groups of developers fail to become artists, or designers or style builders because they cannot conceive of all the variables in building innovative and often extremely high quality crafted code work. So, I take the argument that programming IS creative, but for most, not in a truly innovative sense, but in a problem-solving sense only.
This is not to say designers and artists who begin climbing the programming latter often fail. They do! Where artysist fail as programmers is in boundaries....knowing where to stop innovating! Creative people want to create and keep creating until they have raised the Titanic from its watery grave, or climbed the tower of Babel til they have reached God! They want to make something GREAT AND POWERFUL, and thats the MAIN DIFFERENCE between a .NET progarmmer and an artsist turned programmer! We want to create great monumental works that are both visually beautiful and usable, but we also are intrigued by goo SQL calls and organzied conditional statements and how easy an interface is to use, and objects that are given good simple naming schemes, etc. Artsist fail to see that often times, GOOD PROGRAMMING SOMETIMES DOES NOT MATTER IN THE BUSINESS WORLD. Why create a masterpiece of code and art when most managers could care less....they want to see the project completed on time and the client happy. Maybe thats the true purpose of any great IT project, and that is to hire hackers who are designed to get the job done, as fast and cheaply as possible. And that leads me to my final point folks.....
Artists make great programmers! And those who start out as artists and painters and musicians and poets, who later delve into a new passion fueled by "good code" and purely left brain exercises such as .NET programming - those who see just as much pleasure painting a landscape painting in the desert as sitting in a cold cubicle on a cold rainy day in a business office, hacking away at web application development project - will create great superior software and bring to the table a new paradigm of web develpment thats built on quality rather than quantity and monetary concerns. This ties into another article I will be writing soon, concerning why America seems to be the lead, world-wide in all thing IT. The reason we are the greatest country and still have the greatest minds, when it comes to science, technology, and even art, and why even countries like India, can at best, just "immulate" products we build for their engineering societies, is simply because we INNOVATE....we create! We are the great creators! Thats a fact! Look at our space program. Why are we the best and last word world-wide at space travel in every sense of the word? Not because we are smarter, or our education system is better. (We certainly know thats NOT the case). We are what we are and we build the solutions the rest of the world can only immulate in technology because we have that "free, creative mindset" that only a society like ours can nurture! The day we lose that creativity, that innovation, the artist's soul and imagination, in business and science disciplines as well, we will die as a country and we are doomed (as is the world, I might add!). Sure, thats a controversial statement, but I challenge you to think about that,.....think about my words. Then apply them to what I have been saying about programmers. Utlimately, if you stick a child in a plastic bubble who has an apptitude for math and programming, and teach that child to think about the most complex and archaic algorythms such that he can program anything....he still may fail, and fail grandely, I might add. Why? Programmers DONT HAVE THE NECESSARY CREATIVE SPIRIT....artists and creative spirits do, and its the few programmers out there, who have been artists and musicians and who make art their "OTHER CAREER" that are making the innovative software today in the world. Those management teams that crank out "solutions" and hacks and make the money in the business world are NOT the innovators. Its the companies that VALUE their creative soldiers.....artists and the "artist programmers" and those with the freedom and time to take their time to create GREAT CODE (not hacked together code) that make the software we live and swear by today in business. You may get mad about this but I challenge you to look at Apple and Microsoft. Both are companies that are built on innovation, no matter how you break it down....pure and simple. You and I, as web developers and designers, are just the fabric that lies across the sturdy tables they built for us. If we are lucky, we get to build a little innovation on top of the great foundations those platforms have laid before us. Why have those companies succeeded? Did they succeed with managers and CEO's that only cared about the client and the bottom line? I say NO.....HELL NO!!!!!! It was taking a risk and giving the people in the company with the creative soul the ability to take risks and build innovative software programs. You cant tell me thats an army of people with PHD's or mensa candidates either. It was allot of creative business people and architects and engineers scribbling mental notes in their sleep and all kinds of brainstorming and artistic thinking by creative people.
Your company will succeed, as all companies will succeed, when they RESPECT THE ARTIST and the artist-programmer as the most valued asset in any IT group...when they listen to the creative personel on their teams, not as lil' ol' web designers who they keep around cheaply as the ones responsible for making things "look pretty" or to clean up the messes left behond by sloppy programmers. They should be seen as the valued and necessary creators of solutions that stick, and MAKE MONEY! When an artists or creative soul turns programmer, then the transformation is complete from worm to butterfly, and those individuals have the power to take creative programming to a new innovative level, if respected.
It also takes a CEO and management group with WIDE VISION, to challenge and value the artistic sprit, and those with strong innovative spirits enough to give them the TIME AND MONEY to build great works slowly as they need, and with purpose. Look at what Macintoch did with their OS user interface and how thats changed how Windows 95 was designed, and ultimately how the business world works today. (Maybe that was in turn stolen from XEROX...we will never know). But the fact is, it took TIME and INNOVATION, and a innovative spirit to create code and programming that was beautifully and carefully crafted; to create code that is a craft in and of itself. So, before I get off my high horse, this artist turned programmer wants you to know that NOT ALL PROGRAMMERS ARE CREATED EQUALLY, and dont be deceived by knowledgable and experienced programmers, who hack and sloppily build code and undervalue artists and web designers. As more of us take the challenge to build a dual discipline career, and approach programming with a "new vision"and "new passion", think about how that changes your programming team....think about how that affects the software development you send blindly overseas to be outsourced, or what makes Microsoft and Apple the powerful innovative and creative companies they are (ie, especially look at the Apple iPod....making millions today for its great innovative design...and Im NOT just talking about cosmetics folks!). And you will have, hopefully, an enlightened approach to artists turned programmers and creative souls everywhere! I have seen the other side and now understand the mistakes I have seen made by those on that other side, as I take my artistic vision full force into my code development and compare Information System architectures with my brethren online. We have a better way of programming. Just give us a chance! Value the ultimate programmer - the Artist Turned Developer!
- Mitchell Stokely, USA
