Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.20 (639 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1555976859 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-09-29 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
There is so much to be fascinated by here.” Salon“Chandra, brainy, delving, and spellbinding, delineates the intricacy and beauty of code. “An unexpected tour de force. But very, very few can comfortably inhabit both worlds with such grace and precision. Programmers feel an exhilarating creative mastery, and Chandra captures it.” James Gleick, The New York Times Book Review“Geek Sublime dwells on Chandra's gripping personal narrative as well as his sometimes spiritual exploration of computer language, the ancient Vedas, and the way they share so many traits with fiction. Its ambition: to look deeply, and with great subtlety, into the connections and tensions between the worlds--the cultures--of technology and art. Plenty of programmers consider themselves artists, and plenty of writers presume to declaim about programming. It is a dazzle, from beginn
"Talks A Bit About Tech, A Lot About the Sublime, and Never Links the Two" according to B. Jacobs-swearingen. Readers should expect the majority of this book to be devoted to a detailed discussion of connections between Indian metaphysics and aesthetics and the author's personal approach to creative writing; the tech elements in the book (brief examination of digital logic, functional v object oriented programming, etc) are mostly relegated to their own segregated chapters. This makes one almost feel as if one . Raya Wolfsun said Brilliant reconciliation of computers, literature and culture(s). I think this book holds the most for anyone who appreciates science/ technology/ logic and all it can do, but struggles with the culture around it where (at least in modern America) it downplays things like beauty, human connection, and the ability to stir emotion.I found it to be a beautiful weaving together of computer science, premodern Indian linguistics/aesthetic philosophy, and the author's own ex. Paul said Fascinating and frustrating by turns. Geek Sublime explores Chandra's love of language and reads in parts as an ode to Sanskrit in particular. Unfortunately, the constant shifting in description and language is distracting and makes it challenging to connect a narrative. Historical descriptions of computer science and its progenitors were particularly interesting and overall the book forces through a plausible hypothesis that beauty is not
The nonfiction debut from the author of the international bestseller "Sacred Games" about the surprising overlap between writing and computer codingVikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style, just as writers are, but do the words mean the same thing to both? Can we ascribe beauty to the craft of writing code? Exploring such varied topics as logic gates and literary modernism, the machismo of tech geeks, the omnipresence of an "Indian Mafia" in Silicon Valley, and the writings of the eleventh-century Kashmiri th
Vikram Chandra is the author of three highly acclaimed works of fiction, most recently "Sacred Games," which won the 2006 Hutch Crossword Award. . Chandra lives in Oakland, California and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley