code as poetry

vaaaska

I've had to force myself not to post this for months now, but now I do so...

It's only a curiousity of mine, as my academic career consisted of literature and humanities, if any of y'all have ever messed with code language and poetry (or the like). I see snippets in sig files all the time where people play with code in a very formal way like language itself.

I can't find it now, but last week I wrote a stupid function to tell a friend about how nice the day was...of course, ending with a loop that would never end (infinite - well, the server would time out, but you know what I mean).

As I've learned more over these past two years (thanks to you guys), I keep crossing this line in my head where I can reason out a snippet of code that could express what I'm saying verbally - it's a pretty interesting feeling.

I don't know, this is ultra-geekiness (in the best possible way) and the same reason why you see me mucking around here so much. I hope I'm not sounding like a freak now, but I sure I do (again, hehe).

bubblenut

You're not the only one 🙂
I think it's an incredibly expressive medium. In my opinion poetry is something which attempts to convey raw thoughts and feelings to the reader, this is something that code can do very well. Another interesting aspect to code poetry is that it can have more than one face to it. You have the code, and then the ouput at least and there's no telling what the output may be so you could have even more faces. This is all well and good but I'm nowhere near clever enough for it 🙁 I can only hope that the faeries will take pitty on me and teach me the ways of that enigmatic beast, the code poet. 🙂

vaaaska

Well, as I once stated in my Early Newbie Period (ENP), PHP (and code in general) was like learning Photoshop all over again for me. Except, I can do a heck of alot more with code...

Sometimes I'm tempted to go get a Masters degree and the only thing I can think I can think of doing, that would have meaning to me, would be a cross between linguistics and programming languages. Of course, I don't really know/understand programming well enough to do this...

Anybody know of a good book that travels this path? Ack, getting too inspired by this stuff...must get back to work!

😃

dalecosp

<?php

$SawPurpleCow=0;
$Hope2SeeOne=0;

if ($SawPurpleCow || $Hope2SeeOne || !$SawPurpleCow || !$Hope2SeeOne) ) {
	echo "I'd rather see than be one!";
}

// I never saw a purple cow,
// I never hope to see one;
// But I can tell you, anyhow,
// I'd rather see than be one.

//by Gelett Burgess

// php by me :D
?>

Shrike

class SummersDay {
  var $lovely;
  var $temperate;

  function summersDay(){
    ++$this->lovely;
    ++$this->temperate;
  }
}
if($i == $thee){
  $thee = new SummersDay();
}

😃