Geek Sublime
Vikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary book he returns to his early days as a writer, when he was beginning Red Earth and Pouring Rain, and looks at the connections between these two worlds of art and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style just as writers are but do the words mean the same thing to both? And is it a coincidence that Chandra is drawn to two seemingly opposing ways of thinking? To answer his questions, Chandra delves into the writings of Abhinavagupta, the tenth- and eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker, and creates an idiosyncratic history of coding. Part literary theory, part tech story and part memoir, Mirrored Mind is a book of sweeping ideas. It is a heady and utterly original work.
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What Hacker News says
- If you find this interesting, you might also like the book Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra. It explores connections between linguistics and computation and touches upon Paninian grammar.
- The two practices have quite a bit in common, including the need to break down a very large, hard-to-grasp problem (a novel or an application) into a set of smaller easier-to-solve problems (objects, functions, chapters) that fit together in a coherent whole.
I wrote a similar post when, after many years of software development, I finally got around to writing my first novel. https://adiamond.me/2015/01/writing-and-programming/
The author is right in saying the key is really to show up and put in the work. That can be really hard for a lot of people, but programmers are already accustomed to it.
BTW, Vikram Chandra's Geek Sublime also does a good job investigating the ties between writing code and writing prose. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19353724-geek-sublime
Chandra goes way back, pointing out that the generative grammar we use today to describe valid programming language constructs was first created 2500 years ago in India by a guy named Panini who fully and precisely described the structure of the entire Sanskrit language. There's more on that here, if you're interested: https://medium.com/@dmitrypavluk/we-should-thank-sanskrit-fo...
- The author blurb at the end of this brilliant piece simply says "Vikram Chandra: Writer, programmer, teacher." It wasn't until I clicked through to the linked website[0] that I realized that this was THE Vikram Chandra. His novels Sacred Games and Red Earth And Pouring Rain are very highly recommended. He also has a non-fiction book, Geek Sublime that seems somewhat related to this article.
- You could find interesting Vikram Chandra's "Geek Sublime". It's an essay about writing and programming.
- Geek Sublime by Vikram Chandra. The connections between the worlds of art and technology.
http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Sublime-The-Beauty-Code/dp/155597...
- I'm about a quarter of the way through "The Martian" by Andy Weir. It's good, geeky fun so far. Some of the dialog is clunky but the main character is interesting and fun.
I also read "11/22/63" by Stephen King. An interesting twist on time travel with the usual King propulsiveness. Recommended for King fans like me who may not have read him in awhile.
"Geek Sublime" by Vikram Chandra is a surprising mix of "my career in writing" with computation lessons and history. I took a break from it to read The Martian but it's extremely interesting. He's one of my favorite writers and I'm glad he's got something out that might expose him to a different audience.
