I Don’t Do Programming

Dowbrigade Weblog: Confessions of an Analog Guy pretty much sums up my feelings on becoming a computer programmer. I think maybe I do a bit better than he does, but I’m certainly no code geek, nor am I particularly anxious to repeat my frustration with it. I can tweak code, I can sometimes fix people’s mistakes, but when something goes majorly wrong, out it goes.

Soul coders, white-hat wizards, often compare what they do to magic, and refer to their scripts as �incantations�. This relates to a long tradition of Western magic, traceable back through Crowley to the Rosicrucian and the Hebrew Cabalists. All of these forms of magic are based in The Word, immutable and transcendant, and at least in their popularized forms involve chanting or reciting long, exact strings of incomprehensible sounds. One mistake will break the spell, or worse, create a completely different spell with unintended, usually catastrophic consequences.

My experiences with magic are quite different. The shamans I have known and studied with were of the third-world, analog variety. They had no prepared or memorized spells. How could they, when the powers and entities they would be working with were so varied and unpredictable? Their chants were soulful sound-webs, trying to synch with the vibrations in their immediate environment, different every time, adapting from instant to instant.

But who am I to deny the validity of digital magic? Every time Google comes up with just the bit of information I am looking for, a needle in a haystack, I give a nod to the google-god.

*grins* Enjoy the essay… follow the link above.