Hello,
I'm happy to announce the upcoming publication of my essay entitled
Lisp, Jazz, Aikido, to appear in Volume 2 Issue 3 of the Art, Science
and Engineering of Programming journal, in April 2018.
The abstract is given below.
The relation between Science (what we can explain) and Art (what we can't) has
long been acknowledged and while every science contains an artistic part,
every art form also needs a bit of science. Among all scientific disciplines,
programming holds a special place for two reasons. First, the artistic part is
not only undeniable but also essential. Second, and much like in a purely
artistic discipline, the act of programming is driven partly by the notion of
aesthetics: the pleasure we have in creating beautiful things.
Eventhough the importance of aesthetics in the act of programming is now
unquestioned, not much has been written on the subject. The field called
"psychology of programming" focuses on the cognitive aspects of the activity,
with the goal of improving the productivity of the programmers. Very few
programmers have written about their thought process while programming either,
and even fewer on their concern for aesthetics, and the impact it has on their
activity.
I can see three reasons for this. First, it may be frightening to do
so. Reflecting on our aesthetic sensitivities involves thinking about our own
emotions, and not everyone is ready or willing to perform that kind of
introspection. Second, this introspection needs to be very deep, as our
aesthetic sensitivities are extremely personal. Third, this introspection also
needs to be very broad, as our aesthetic sensitivities affect every part of
our lives.
The purpose of this essay is to shed some new light on the art of programming
by answering questions such as what makes us like or dislike such or such
language or paradigm, or why do we shape our programs the way we do, all of
this from the angle of aesthetics. Starting from the assumption that
aesthetics is an inherently transversal concern, it should be possible for
every programmer to find the same aesthetic driving force in every creative
activity they undertake, not just programming, and in doing so, get deeper
insight on why and how they do things the way they do.
On the other hand, because our aesthetic sensitivities are so personal, all we
can really do is relate our own experiences and share it with others, in the
hope that it will inspire them to do the same. It is certainly an important
purpose of this essay. My personal life has been revolving around three major
creative activities, of equal importance: programming in Lisp, playing Jazz
music and practicing Aikido. But why so many of them, why so different ones,
and why these specifically?
By introspecting my personal aesthetic sensitivities, I eventually realized
that my tastes in the scientific, artistic and physical domains are all
motivated by the same driving forces, hence unifying Lisp, Jazz and Aikido as
three expressions of a single essence, not so different after all. In doing
so, I gained considerable insight on my own psychology of programming, perhaps
common to most lispers, perhaps also common to other programming
communities. But that is for the reader to decide...
--
Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated.
Lisp, Jazz, Aïkido: http://www.didierverna.info
ELS'18 - 11th European Lisp Symposium
Centro Cultural Cortijo de Miraflores
Marbella, Málaga
Spain
April 16-17 2018
Sponsored by Brunner Software GmbH and EPITA
http://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/
*** Important: submission deadline extended to Sunday Feb. 25!
The purpose of the European Lisp Symposium is to provide a forum for
the discussion and dissemination of all aspects of design,
implementation and application of any of the Lisp and Lisp-inspired
dialects, including Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, AutoLisp, ISLISP,
Dylan, Clojure, ACL2, ECMAScript, Racket, SKILL, Hop and so on. We
encourage everyone interested in Lisp to participate.
The 11th European Lisp Symposium invites high quality papers about
novel research results, insights and lessons learned from practical
applications and educational perspectives. We also encourage
submissions about known ideas as long as they are presented in a new
setting and/or in a highly elegant way.
Topics include but are not limited to:
- Context-, aspect-, domain-oriented and generative programming
- Macro-, reflective-, meta- and/or rule-based development approaches
- Language design and implementation
- Language integration, inter-operation and deployment
- Development methodologies, support and environments
- Educational approaches and perspectives
- Experience reports and case studies
We invite submissions in the following forms:
Papers: Technical papers of up to 8 pages that describe original
results or explain known ideas in new and elegant ways.
Demonstrations: Abstracts of up to 2 pages for demonstrations of
tools, libraries, and applications.
Tutorials: Abstracts of up to 4 pages for in-depth presentations
about topics of special interest for at least 90 minutes and up to
180 minutes.
The symposium will also provide slots for lightning talks, to be
registered on-site every day.
All submissions should be formatted following the ACM SIGS guidelines
and include ACM Computing Classification System 2012 concepts and
terms. Submissions should be uploaded to Easy Chair, at the following
address: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=els2018
Note: to help us with the review process please indicate the type of
submission by entering either "paper", "demo", or "tutorial" in the
Keywords field.
Important dates:
- 25 Feb 2018 Submission deadline (*** extended! ***)
- 19 Mar 2018 Notification of acceptance
- 25 Mar 2018 Early registration deadline
- 02 Apr 2018 Final papers due
- 16-17 Apr 2018 Symposium
Programme chair:
David Cooper, Genworks Intl., USA
Local chairs:
Andrew Lawson, Ravenpack, Spain
Programme committee:
Andy Wingo, Igalia, Spain
Christophe Rhodes, Goldsmiths University, UK
Christopher Wellons Null Program Canada
Irène Durand, LaBRI, Université de Bordeaux, France
Julian Padget, University of Bath, UK
Ludovic Courtès, Inria, France
Michael Sperber, DeinProgramm, Germany
Nicolas Neuss, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Olin Shivers Northwestern University USA
Philipp Marek, Austria
Robert Strandh, LaBRI, Université de Bordeaux, France
Sacha Chua Living an Awesome Life Canada
Scott McKay, Future Fuel, USA
Search Keywords:
#els2018, ELS 2018, ELS '18, European Lisp Symposium 2018,
European Lisp Symposium '18, 10th ELS, 10th European Lisp Symposium,
European Lisp Conference 2018, European Lisp Conference '18
--
Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated.
Lisp, Jazz, Aïkido: http://www.didierverna.info
Reminder: submission deadline this sunday!
ELS'18 - 11th European Lisp Symposium
Centro Cultural Cortijo de Miraflores
Marbella, Málaga
Spain
April 16-17 2018
Sponsored by Brunner Software GmbH and EPITA
http://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/
The purpose of the European Lisp Symposium is to provide a forum for
the discussion and dissemination of all aspects of design,
implementation and application of any of the Lisp and Lisp-inspired
dialects, including Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, AutoLisp, ISLISP,
Dylan, Clojure, ACL2, ECMAScript, Racket, SKILL, Hop and so on. We
encourage everyone interested in Lisp to participate.
The 11th European Lisp Symposium invites high quality papers about
novel research results, insights and lessons learned from practical
applications and educational perspectives. We also encourage
submissions about known ideas as long as they are presented in a new
setting and/or in a highly elegant way.
Topics include but are not limited to:
- Context-, aspect-, domain-oriented and generative programming
- Macro-, reflective-, meta- and/or rule-based development approaches
- Language design and implementation
- Language integration, inter-operation and deployment
- Development methodologies, support and environments
- Educational approaches and perspectives
- Experience reports and case studies
We invite submissions in the following forms:
Papers: Technical papers of up to 8 pages that describe original
results or explain known ideas in new and elegant ways.
Demonstrations: Abstracts of up to 2 pages for demonstrations of
tools, libraries, and applications.
Tutorials: Abstracts of up to 4 pages for in-depth presentations
about topics of special interest for at least 90 minutes and up to
180 minutes.
The symposium will also provide slots for lightning talks, to be
registered on-site every day.
All submissions should be formatted following the ACM SIGS guidelines
and include ACM Computing Classification System 2012 concepts and
terms. Submissions should be uploaded to Easy Chair, at the following
address: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=els2018
Note: to help us with the review process please indicate the type of
submission by entering either "paper", "demo", or "tutorial" in the
Keywords field.
Important dates:
- 18 Feb 2018 Submission deadline
- 19 Mar 2018 Notification of acceptance
- 25 Mar 2018 Early registration deadline
- 02 Apr 2018 Final papers due
- 16-17 Apr 2018 Symposium
Programme chair:
David Cooper, Genworks Intl., USA
Local chairs:
Andrew Lawson, Ravenpack, Spain
Programme committee:
Christophe Rhodes, Goldsmiths University, UK
Christopher Wellons Null Program Canada
Irène Durand, LaBRI, Université de Bordeaux, France
Julian Padget, University of Bath, UK
Ludovic Courtès, Inria, France
Michael Sperber, DeinProgramm, Germany
Nicolas Neuss, Universität Karlsruhe, Germany
Olin Shivers Northwestern University USA
Robert Strandh, LaBRI, Université de Bordeaux, France
Sacha Chua Living an Awesome Life Canada
Scott McKay, Future Fuel, USA
Search Keywords:
#els2018, ELS 2018, ELS '18, European Lisp Symposium 2018,
European Lisp Symposium '18, 10th ELS, 10th European Lisp Symposium,
European Lisp Conference 2018, European Lisp Conference '18
--
Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated.
Lisp, Jazz, Aïkido: http://www.didierverna.info
