I spent a moderate amount of time in my early childhood learning how to code on Texas Instruments and Apple computers and took to it rather well, I believe. Several years later, amidst the throes of puberty and junior high school, I took up the electric bass as my instrument of choice and began following the path of the professional musician. Now, many years later, I have thrust myself upon the programming world once again.
As a working professional in the web development field, it started to become apparent that the thought processes behind writing songs and writing applications were very closely tied together. Two fields that I had once thought to be unrelated and devoid of any similarities, had suddenly become doppelgangers. Once you strip the labels from the theory required to adequately implement an application or compose a song, the dividing lines begin to blur.
It’s the little things…
In songwriting and programming, one thing to keep in mind is to not overdo the underlying structure. Simply because you possess the ability to play the fastest riff or phrase continuously for seventeen minutes doesn’t mean that it makes sense for you to do so. The song has to have breathing room in order for all of the instruments to accurately meld into “the sound”; to solidify itself as something that a listener would want to listen to repeatedly. The same line of thought goes into programming as well. Just because you can write the most complicated scripts or methods doesn’t mean that you should. Over-analyzation can easily lead to code that is an incredible pain to debug and has a significantly higher chance of breaking.
A well written application that does what it is supposed to do will drive the end-user to use and explore it, just as a well written or performed song will drive the listener to lose themselves in the music. In my humble opinion, the true satisfaction in either field comes from the ultimate satisfaction of the user or listener.
There are too many similarities between these two fields for me to discuss in a single article, so I will continue with this subject in later posts. I am also very interested to hear your thoughts on the subject as I proceed with my introspection.