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Devil Shat 1998 12 03
.ili. Devil Shat Forty One .ili.
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Introduction and Other Preface Fears ............... by Morbus
The Manifesto of the Futurist Programmers ......... by various
This is Devil Shat Forty One released on 12/03/98. Devil Shat is
published by Disobey and is protected under all copyright laws. All of
the issues are archived at the Disobey website: http://www.disobey.com/
Submissions, email, and news should be sent to morbus@disobey.com. Your
comments are welcome. What do you want us to write about? Send an email
and let us know.
Fnord. Whoa. I said Fnord.
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.ili. Introduction and Other Preface Fears .ili.
------------------------------------------------ by Morbus
Some people hate when I don't write a full article for Devil Shat...
after all, they've come to read Devil Shat, and Devil Shat is usually
written by me. So, they reason, they feel like they're not getting their
bi-weekly feed if they're not getting one hundred percent unadulterated
Morbus.
As much as one reader claims that having two Morbus ("Morbii"?) would be
like heaven, I must admit that I am only one and limited. My past two
weeks have been frightfully busy what with the rest of Disobey and the
like.
Not only is there the rest of Disobey, but there is also the Program.
Capitalized here for its importance, the Program has put me in such a
frenzy that my thoughts have been focussed on it fully.
Morbus is programming a piece of software you would never think he would
have written, and he's having a ball doing it.
In my travels (isn't it great how he steps in and out of first person?),
I found the following article, and with gracious permission by its
caretaker, have published it here. It may be your cup of tea, it may be
your piece of shit.
Either way, read it. Yup.
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.ili. The Manifesto of the Futurist Programmers .ili.
----------------------------------------------------- by various
To the young programmers of the World!
The cry of the rebellion we launch here, in which we firmly implant our
ideals alongside those of the Futurist painters, does not come from a
little aesthetic minded clique but, on the contrary, expresses the
violent desire that seethes in the veins of every creative programmer
today.
We want to fight to the bitter end against the fanatical, thoughtless,
and purely snobbish religious faith in the past, stoked by the nefarious
existence of the academic journals. We are rebelling against the
sluggishly supine admiration for old operating systems, old languages,
archaic standards, and against the enthusiasm for everything bug-ridden,
rotting with code bloat, and eaten away by obsolescence. And we judge
unjust - criminal in fact - the habitual disdain for programs whose
construction is different and original, new, throbbing with life.
Comrades! We declare to you that triumphant progress in the other
sciences has brought about, in humanity as a whole, changes so profound
as to dredge out an abyss between the past and us free creatures who are
securely confident in the radiant magnificence of the future.
We are nauseated by the despicable sloth that, ever since the 1970's,
has let our programmers survive only through an incessant reprogramming
of the glories of the past.
For the professionals of other disciplines, programming is still a land
of the dead, an immense Pompeii still whitening with sepulchers. But
programming is being reborn, and in the wake of its political resurgence
an intellectual resurgence is taking place. In the expressways of our
teeming cities, the pistons of our automobiles are fired by the spark of
microprocessors. In the land of the couch potatoes, computers control
the appliances of our daily existence. In the fields of traditional
technology one is struck today by a new elan, by lightning-bright
inspirations of something utterly new.
Only that programming is vital which finds its own elements in the
people who use it. Our forbearers drew material for their programming
from the religious atmosphere weighing heavily on their programs. We
must now draw out inspiration from the tangible miracles of contemporary
life, from the portable CD players that bring digital music to the
masses, from the supersonic airplanes which achieve speed of flight
through lightness of weight, the portable television sets which are
available throughout the world and boot in less time than any computer
system, from the convulsive struggle for the conquest of the unknown.
Then too, how can we remain indifferent to the frenetic activity of the
great cities, to the utterly new psychology of programming that takes
wing only after dark, to the febrile figures of the viveur, the cocotte,
the hacker, the addicts to coffee?
Because we propose to play our part in the badly needed renewal of all
expressions of programming, we resolutely declare war against all those
programmers and against all those institutions that, however they may
camouflage themselves in raiment of pseudo-modernity, remain mired in
tradition, in academicism, in a repugnant mental laziness.
We call on all young programmers to unleash their scorn on the whole lot
of brainless canaille who in Computer Science applaud a sick-making
reflorescence of spineless classicism; who in MIT praise to the skies
the neurotic cultists of network-transparent window systems - a
hermaphroditic archaism; who in computer companies heap financial
rewards on a pedestrian and blind manual skill a la 1974; who in
Berkeley adulate programming typical of pensioned-off government
functionaries; and in IBM glorify a farraginous rubbish heap turned out
by fossilized alchemists! In short, we rise up against the
superficiality, banality, and slovenly, corner-workshop facility that
makes most of the widely respected computer programmers in every region
of Silicon Valley worthy, instead, of the deepest contempt.
Out with you, then, bought-and-sold rewriters of hack programs! Out with
you, archaeologists infected with chronic necrophilia! Out, atavistic
executives, you complaisant panderers! Out, gouty academics, besotted
and ignorant professors! Out!
Go ask the high priests of the True Cult, those guardians of Structured
Programming Rules where the works of Henry Massalin are to be seen
today; ask them why the official operating systems do not even recognize
the existence of self modifying code; ask them where the art of User
Interface is appreciated at its true worth! . . . And who takes the
trouble to think about the programmers who don't have twenty years of
struggles and sufferings behind them but nonetheless are preparing works
destined to bring honor to the homeland? Oh no, those critics ever ready
to sell themselves have very different interests to defend! The
eXhibitions, the standards cartels, and the superficial and
never-disinterested purchasing departments are what condemn the
programming art to what is, plainly speaking prostitution!
And what should we say about the "Experts"? Come, come! Let's make an
end once and for all to the layerists, the extensabilitists, the toolkit
mongers, the librarians - We have put up with them quite enough, with
all those impotent programmers of useless software!
Let us make an end also to the wasters of disk space who clutter up our
machines and profane our lightning-fast memories! An end to the
quick-money architecture of the jobbers of the prefabricated! An End to
the common run of program decorators, the fakers of technology, the
masters of software cosmetology who sell themselves, and the slovenly
and thick headed "managers"!
And here are our CONCLUSIONS resolute and in a nutshell. With our
enthusiastic adherence to Futurism we aim:
1. To destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with all things old,
academic pedantry, and formalism
2. To cast our scorn profoundly on every last form of imitation
3. To exalt every form of originality, even if foolhardy, even if
extremely violent
4. To bear bravely and proudly the smear of "madness" with which they
try to gag all innovators
5. To look on the lot of computer "scientists" as at one and the same
time useless and dangerous
6. To rebel against the tyranny of the words "extensible" and "reusable"
expressions so elastic that they can just as easily be used to demolish
the art of Atkinson, Baumgart and Deutsch as well
7. To sweep out of the mental field of programming all themes and
subjects already exploited
8. To render and magnify the life of today, incessantly and tumultuously
transformed by science triumphant
Let the dead be buried in the deepest bowels of the earth! Let the
future's threshold be swept clean of mummies! Make way for the young,
the violent, the headstrong!
Painter Umberto Boccioni (Milan)
Programmer Paul Haeberli (Menlo Park)
Programmer Bruce Karsh (Los Altos)
Programmer Ron Fischer (San Francisco)
Programmer Peter Broadwell (Santa Cruz)
Programmer Tim Wicinski (Mountain View)
June 15, 1991
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