Geek Sublime
The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
by Vikram Chandra · first published 2014
63% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Essays on the links between writing and programming, and between art and technology, drawn from the author's own career. Suits programmers curious about craft and readers who enjoy writing about code.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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 Kash
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…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…
on “Ask HN: What is HN reading?” ↗You could find interesting Vikram Chandra's "Geek Sublime". It's an essay about writing and programming.
on “I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972” ↗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...
on “Ask HN: What are some of the best written programming books?” ↗…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. 0: http://www.vikramchandra.com/
on “Pāṇini: Catching the Ocean in a Cow’s Hoofprint” ↗…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…
on “Programming and Writing” ↗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.
on “Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence” ↗…Merkin 17. 'Fire Shut Up In My Bones: A Memoir' by Charles M. Blow 18. 'Forcing The Spring: Inside The Fight For Marriage Equality' by Jo Becker 19. 'Gandhi Before India' by Ramachandra Guha 20. 'Geek Sublime: The Beauty Of Code, The Code Of Beauty' by Vikram Chandra 21. 'Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, And Death In The Spanish Civil War' by Amanda Vaill 22. 'The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us' by Diane Ackerman…
on “Notable Books of 2014” ↗…Catching the Ocean in a Cow’s Hoofprint" [1] by the novelist Vikram Chandra (known now as the author of Sacred Games thanks to the Netflix show, but possibly better known among HN readers as the author of Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty). Or if you're looking to get a glimpse by diving into some technical papers (but readable in English), search for "Panini" on Prof. Kiparsky's page: https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/…
on “PhD student solves 2,500-year-old Sanskrit problem” ↗Sacred Games is now on the reading list. I shall have a look at Geek Sublime at a bookshop and decide then. Quote about an earlier book from another interview... "Sometimes even you can look at something you wrote six months back and be baffled. So the programmer’s job becomes…
on “Vikram Chandra Is a Novelist Who’s Obsessed with Writing Computer Code” ↗