Introduction

Hello  I'm new too.

Random question to all the programmers/coders (if that's what you guys call yourselves?! ) but how did you initially get into it? I'm sadly oblivious to all things 'tech' 

my first interaction with computers was using MS DOS (anyone remember that!?!?), so command-based interactions with computers is what I saw as proper computing, and it was immensely satisfying typing in the correct commands. that was the start of me finding 'coding' exciting. i then had to do a bit at university for my MSc dissertation, then I really had to use it in my job - we were doing fairly sophisticated stuff with big data sets that excel was too rubbish to handle, so used code-based statistical software. after that i learned html as a side hobby, then work transitioned to R and Python and I got into those a bit. It is just satisfying looking at a screen of code, being able to understand it, know it is your creation, and that it works. It is both creative and logical, so satisfying for the whole brain. There aren't many thinks like that TBH. I always chuckle at the self-defined 'creative' types who just have no clue that creativity exists everywhere, not just in an artist studio or a theatre, in fact from my interactions they don't want to know!

I think you're right ... but I wouldn't put it like that.  In photography, there are emerging sub-groups, and I'm watching it with total fascination. It isn't as rigid as this, the groups all merge into each other, there are other sub-groups, and what follows is a brutal oversimplification to illustrate the point.

1.  There's a group who do mainly Second Life type stuff - totally digitally created images.  They often come from the gaming/Marvel sectors.  On Flickr and similar places you can see some truly awful, crude, car-crash, basic stuff from these people, often based on a sort of weird and worrying pornography, frequently portrayals of women with grotesquely swollen body parts.  They are also technically rubbish. Even if you discount the technical incompetence and pornographic intent they have almost zero artistic merit.  But at a more sophisticated level people using broadly the same tools can produce some truly amazing imagery. 

2.  Then there are 'photographers' who have done almost no work on the basic artistry and don't understand the things that used to be taught in a rigorous academic art environment, but regard themselves as digital geniuses; they tend to take quite poor pictures and then spend ages working on them in post production.  The resulting images are sometimes clever, on a technical level, and have almost no worth on an artistic level.

3.  Finally, there are people who are really bad at digital editing, but who believe they can "take a picture".  Their images may have some artistic merit but they often look like a throwback to 1953.  These people quite often strike attitudes that they posit as "artistically purist" and proudly announce that they do zero digital manipulation, but unfortunately, that's usually because they don't know how to.  Their position has no credibility - they're using a camera (sometimes with film, but even that is 'technology'), different lenses allowing them to distort the framing, they 'choose' what to include in the frame and what not to include etc.  To say that they won't do digital editing because it is somehow "impure" makes no sense at all.  It's like saying a painter can't use modern paints because of the 'technology' involved in their manufacture, or can only use a proscribed type of brush, or substrate.  Technology doesn't stop at some random point in history, and become somehow 'artistically impure' or 'the work of the Devil' after that date (if you think otherwise, go and join an Amish community).  

The truth, as your post indicates, is that a true artist has both technical capability and artistic talent and is able to select whatever tools will best allow them to express themselves. 'Creativity' isn't limited to any one channel or discipline.  Coding is, indeed, incredibly creative. 

The reason these 'tribes' have arisen is that technology has moved so fast in recent decades.  I do, indeed, remember MS DOS, and I was in the newspaper industry when IT began to take over.  The introduction of any significant level of technology initially risks social upheaval, because those 'invested' in the status quo feel threatened, those pushing for it know that commercial survival depends on it, and you can't go backwards. 

Fortunately, as a society, we've learned lessons about how to introduce it with more sensitivity. 

I was in the media in the 80s, and a member of the National Union of Journalists, which was very defensive, and had pretty much a closed shop on most credible newsrooms in those days.  I well remember the brutal way computerisation was introduced, and the resulting social unrest; I remember colleagues being unbelievably angry at the move of printing to the docklands, the big strikes in Fleet Street, at big regional media centres like the Express & Star in the Midlands (national TV coverage of near riots outside their Wolverhampton offices every night for weeks), The Nottingham Evening Post, at Grunwick etc.

Technology is fantastic.  I'm not as clever as you but I do keep up with it, more diligently than most of my generation.  Its introduction at scale usually leads to social unrest (although hopefully, we'll get increasingly smart at doing that more sensitively, because that unrest also carries a huge cost).   

But the follow-on point from yours is that creativity, and art, comes in all forms, and in many hobbies, professions, trades and occupations.  Creativity is mostly good, quite often staggeringly good, and as you imply, it's a shame that the way our brains work sometimes means that we get a bit tribal about it. The expression of talent and passion can find multiple outlets.   And that definitely includes writing code. 

I think you're right ... but I wouldn't put it like that.  In photography, there are emerging sub-groups, and I'm watching it with total fascination. It isn't as rigid as this, the groups all merge into each other, there are other sub-groups, and what follows is a brutal oversimplification to illustrate the point.

1.  There's a group who do mainly Second Life type stuff - totally digitally created images.  They often come from the gaming/Marvel sectors.  On Flickr and similar places you can see some truly awful, crude, car-crash, basic stuff from these people, often based on a sort of weird and worrying pornography, frequently portrayals of women with grotesquely swollen body parts.  They are also technically rubbish. Even if you discount the technical incompetence and pornographic intent they have almost zero artistic merit.  But at a more sophisticated level people using broadly the same tools can produce some truly amazing imagery. 

2.  Then there are 'photographers' who have done almost no work on the basic artistry and don't understand the things that used to be taught in a rigorous academic art environment, but regard themselves as digital geniuses; they tend to take quite poor pictures and then spend ages working on them in post production.  The resulting images are sometimes clever, on a technical level, and have almost no worth on an artistic level.

3.  Finally, there are people who are really bad at digital editing, but who believe they can "take a picture".  Their images may have some artistic merit but they often look like a throwback to 1953.  These people quite often strike attitudes that they posit as "artistically purist" and proudly announce that they do zero digital manipulation, but unfortunately, that's usually because they don't know how to.  Their position has no credibility - they're using a camera (sometimes with film, but even that is 'technology'), different lenses allowing them to distort the framing, they 'choose' what to include in the frame and what not to include etc.  To say that they won't do digital editing because it is somehow "impure" makes no sense at all.  It's like saying a painter can't use modern paints because of the 'technology' involved in their manufacture, or can only use a proscribed type of brush, or substrate.  Technology doesn't stop at some random point in history, and become somehow 'artistically impure' or 'the work of the Devil' after that date (if you think otherwise, go and join an Amish community).  

The truth, as your post indicates, is that a true artist has both technical capability and artistic talent and is able to select whatever tools will best allow them to express themselves. 'Creativity' isn't limited to any one channel or discipline.  Coding is, indeed, incredibly creative. 

The reason these 'tribes' have arisen is that technology has moved so fast in recent decades.  I do, indeed, remember MS DOS, and I was in the newspaper industry when IT began to take over.  The introduction of any significant level of technology initially risks social upheaval, because those 'invested' in the status quo feel threatened, those pushing for it know that commercial survival depends on it, and you can't go backwards. 

Fortunately, as a society, we've learned lessons about how to introduce it with more sensitivity. 

I was in the media in the 80s, and a member of the National Union of Journalists, which was very defensive, and had pretty much a closed shop on most credible newsrooms in those days.  I well remember the brutal way computerisation was introduced, and the resulting social unrest; I remember colleagues being unbelievably angry at the move of printing to the docklands, the big strikes in Fleet Street, at big regional media centres like the Express & Star in the Midlands (national TV coverage of near riots outside their Wolverhampton offices every night for weeks), The Nottingham Evening Post, at Grunwick etc.

Technology is fantastic.  I'm not as clever as you but I do keep up with it, more diligently than most of my generation.  Its introduction at scale usually leads to social unrest (although hopefully, we'll get increasingly smart at doing that more sensitively, because that unrest also carries a huge cost).   

But the follow-on point from yours is that creativity, and art, comes in all forms, and in many hobbies, professions, trades and occupations.  Creativity is mostly good, quite often staggeringly good, and as you imply, it's a shame that the way our brains work sometimes means that we get a bit tribal about it. The expression of talent and passion can find multiple outlets.   And that definitely includes writing code. 

Fascinating reply, thanks for that!