Code, misery, euphoria

September 16, 2011 9:32 AM

“It’s misery, misery, misery, misery, euphoria.” (NYMag) Code kids break out of basement. Love the photos.
posted by maggieb (39 comments total)

The pull-quote above?

Yeah. It isn't far from the truth. This is why coders waste a *lot* of time, too. We are famous for multitasking and being lazy enough to automate things, but when down the rabbit hole of a bug, we can get into a cycle that /norms/ would identify as nothing short of pathological.

There is a reason a segment of the geek coder population has glommed onto the Getting Things Done religion. Once you get beyond those early days, taking hits from the debug bong constantly, you start to look for ways not to exhaust yourself into zombie-hood.

Because no one can keep up that frenetic pace. No one. Even the ones we call "fricken genius" will burn out hard, and (though it can be hard to believe) there is more to life than 4-year college degree and midnight coding. Eventually you have to make room for wider experiences, and for that, you need a brain that is capable of accepting those experiences.

Not, you know, reducing everything you see into input and output (I'm speaking from pure experience here.)
posted by clvrmnky at 9:48 AM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

That's a good description of many creative jobs. From my experience, people will only delay gratification to that extent when they're young. As they get older, patience (and family bonds) wear thin. People stop trying to turn out masterpieces and settle for 9-5 banality, or turn to outlets with a lower threshold, like watercolours :|
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:52 AM on September 16, 2011

Jesus christ, a beauty dish, a white backdrop, crap white balance and some desaturation and "love the photos?" It's like NO ONE IS EVEN TRYING ANY MORE. (Get off my lawn.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:52 AM on September 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

seanmpuckett would like everyone to know he has a digital camera.
posted by basicchannel at 10:13 AM on September 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

Weird. Many years ago about a Monome 256 and began to learn Cycling '74's Max/MSP. This is all audio stuff - I play with making electronic music and enjoy tinkering with controllers.

Since then I've sold the 256, and had many other controllers in the meantime, and worked on many different Max projects, and become "not what I think is good but pretty good at my the narrow spectrum of my own needs". And I found something that I thought was peculiar during this process.

When I'm actually working on music, I have an attention span of about two hours, tops. After two hours of sitting still and working on stuff, whether it's going well or poorly, I'm ready to quit for the day. But when I'm programming a Max patch, when I've got some idea that I'm trying to realize, I can concentrate for much, much longer: eight hours a day is pretty easy.

I had theories about why that way: that I was reducing the creative enterprise (music) to a more strictly logical problem (does this work as I intended y/n), and it was that removal of qualitative judgment (no more, "is this track boring?" type questions for the duration of the programming) that made it more appealing/easier.

But it never occurred to me that this was a thing. That this was a phenomena that other people experience because something about problem solving in this way tickles our brains just so. That's interesting (and I feel like I should have studied CS). But then maybe I wouldn't have the rich social life I do now (rimshot, tumbleweed blows through neuromodulator's social life).
posted by neuromodulator at 10:14 AM on September 16, 2011

jeebus that was supposed to be "many years ago I bought"
posted by neuromodulator at 10:14 AM on September 16, 2011

These kids are adorable. I hope some of them interact with humans more than doing lines (of code) and have an altruistic streak as they are going to be our vitamin D deficient leaders soon. (get off my lawn...)
posted by Sophie1 at 10:15 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

holy crap no more posting just out of bed sans caffeine. I am fatally embarrassed.
posted by neuromodulator at 10:16 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sigh, yeah. After debugging a fairly minor feature for 24+ hours, I finally concluded that the bug existed in an external dependency, ripped out the feature, and released the app.

It felt dirty, and I'm still walking around with my head hung low in shame.

Still, my job provides me with the fantastic satisfaction of re-writing the previous guy's spaghetti code. My current record is a 950-line ASP file rewritten into 50 lines of ASP, and subsequently, 20 lines of PHP. And, that was adding features while improving the readability of the code.

And, ohmygod, I have no idea how long it must have taken them to find such ridiculously attractive CS students. Suffice it to say, that is not a representative sample...
posted by schmod at 10:18 AM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

@basicchannel, @seanmpuckett probably has a number of /cameras/, digital or otherwise.

For the record, I had nearly the exact same thought when I saw those images. You don't have to be a pro to recognize tired photographic tropes.

But it helps.

Now, anyone want to share some of their really cool hipstamatic snaps?
posted by clvrmnky at 10:22 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

People stop trying to turn out masterpieces and settle for 9-5 banality...

Or see enough "masterpieces" to realize that no amount of genius is going to get them one, because it's completely arbitrary.

Like that "YouTube Instant". There's nothing that's actually a masterpiece about that. If just happened to take off. Spending day after day hoping something you do happens to catch the fickle taste of the public is pretty depressing.
posted by DU at 10:31 AM on September 16, 2011 [9 favorites]

You don't have to be a pro to recognize tired photographic tropes.


No one pays for pros anymore which is why everything is a cheap trope.
posted by spicynuts at 10:31 AM on September 16, 2011

case in point...look at 100 wedding photography sites. i guarantee you will want to strangle the create of the Lensbaby by site 10.
posted by spicynuts at 10:32 AM on September 16, 2011

You don't have to be a pro to recognize tired photographic tropes.

But it helps.

People have been trying to emulate Avedon for over 35 years (that I'm aware of, probably longer). You would think pros would know better.
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:35 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm not going to blame the photog for it, either. (And I'm sure he got paid; it's NY Mag for chrissake.) The art director probably told him: "hey, make them look sort of cool and isolated, maybe a little anemic, like maybe all they really need is a steak and a hug." It's such a freaking lazy way of illustrating these people they're trying to tell a cool story about.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:06 AM on September 16, 2011

I wonder if it would be at all possible for the legion of self-declared photo critics to try to constrain their criticism to threads where it's the subject, rather than a derail?
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:20 AM on September 16, 2011 [6 favorites]

Not a whole lot else to talk about here. Aside from B-U-B-B-L-E, that is.

Zuckerberg doesn’t code much for Facebook anymore, the same way that Steve Jobs never hand-coded software for the iPhone.

That's a horrible line.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:31 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sean, I'm certain that the art director told the photog Dan Winters "make the pics look like Avedon, like the other portraits you do." Check out his website (warning, the usual photographer's annoying, unnavigable, unlinkable Flash interface) and look under People:Overview and look at his portrait of Obama. It's got the 4x5 view camera film holder marks around the edge, that's a hallmark of the "straight photography" style Avedon was famous for. Now look at Avedon's portrait of Obama. Then go look at Winters' Women in the Military photo shoot, look at that framing and flat light that's about as slavishly as you can copy Avedon's look.

I mean, hell, even Avedon had more variation in his approach to photography than this guy. And no Bunny, this is part of the subject of this post. The use of the Avedon style is literally "framing" the subject of this article. Avedon's style imposes a sense of monumentality on these kids. And as such, it is monumentally lazy to depict a subject in this manner. Instead of monumental, it becomes merely florid. I am sure the magazine editors did not mean to do this in any ironic way, but that's how it comes off to me.
posted by charlie don't surf at 11:33 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

I often wish I could be more like these sorts of people (read: smarter and more driven). I'm a (thankfully employed) web designer who sometimes wears a developer hat and I'm only 24, but I'm really starting to wonder when to come to terms with the fact that I'm likely not going to be a creative genius responsible for a next big thing. I'd like to think I do good work, but I haven't quite figured out how to deal with the possibility that good (rather than great) is what I have to look forward to. I'm continually working on improvement of both craft and creativity, but I wish I knew how to even come up with the sorts of projects that these young developers seem to always be working on in their free time.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:38 AM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Avedon's style imposes a sense of monumentality on these kids.

Well, tengentially, Avedon's style does not inherently impose monumentality. He applied his style to all sorts of subjects, such as ranches, coal miners, children; I imagine you've seen "In the American West," which is widely considered his masterpiece.

But I will agree that the image from this piece is meant to recall Avedon, and meant to seem monumental, and I agree it's not meant to be ironic. It actually seems purposefully to reflect the story. The entire thrust of the story is about tomorrow's technological leaders, who primarily seem to have mastered all-night coding and gimmicky app ideas. They in a bubble right now, where their services are likely overvalued, but the story is written in typically breathless WIRED prose about how hungry they are, and how much they're going to change the world, how they turn down prestigious jobs in favor of smaller ones where they think they can really make their names and fortunes. As somebody earlier said, this seems more likely to produce burn-outs than geniuses, but the story frames them as tomorrow's Bill Gates, and so the photos do too.

For me, this is more interesting than the question of white balance, or whether the photographer is borrowing from Avedon.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 11:51 AM on September 16, 2011 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: large, hyperactive, mildly Asperger-y
posted by TheBones at 12:05 PM on September 16, 2011

"I was thinking, it'd suck if I got a regular job and lost my motivation to do startups, so feel free to mention in an off-hand way that I've, uh, I dunno, 'dabbled with cocaine' or something like that."
posted by mbrock at 12:05 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

I was going to say something about spending hours and hours banging your head against the wall, with you boss on your back asking for an ETA for a fix every ten minutes, then having to stay up on a conference call till 2 to push the fix to production. I'm just going to say this.

Get out while you still can!
posted by Ad hominem at 12:15 PM on September 16, 2011 [4 favorites]

Fuck, I need to start dabbling with something. Some days I hate programming.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:19 PM on September 16, 2011

I often wish I could be more like these sorts of people (read: smarter and more driven)..
This a millions times OLElvis... I'm where you are. Only not employed and trying to figure out what to do with my life. (ok so it's completely different)

I know the 'get out while you can' people mean well but I think the 'young programmer' ethos is admirable. It beats my 'regret my comm degree and my work in the lumbering dinosaur tv news industry.' feeling.
My regret isn't a rational feeling. But still...
posted by hot_monster at 1:27 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dinosaur tv news? Wow. That would be the best half-hour of tv ever.
"Action 6 News, with Utah Raptor and Sarah Topps. Coverage you can sink your teeth into."

sorry
posted by Mister Moofoo at 1:37 PM on September 16, 2011 [5 favorites]

Oh! Do not apologize. You should go write teases for your local tv news shop. The only thing, That one line of copy needs to go through 50 revisions before 5.
posted by hot_monster at 1:54 PM on September 16, 2011

Jesus christ, a beauty dish, a white backdrop, crap white balance and some desaturation and "love the photos?" It's like NO ONE IS EVEN TRYING ANY MORE. (Get off my lawn.)

I mean, hell, even Avedon had more variation in his approach to photography than this guy.


Um, you're talking about Dan FREAKING Winters. Jesus H, go back to whatever it is you normally do and get a grip.
posted by photoslob at 2:57 PM on September 16, 2011

Like that "YouTube Instant". There's nothing that's actually a masterpiece about that. If just happened to take off. Spending day after day hoping something you do happens to catch the fickle taste of the public is pretty depressing.

There's the 'old programmer' flipside of that depression, where one works for long stretches on something they know is the exact opposite of a masterpiece -- something ill-conceived, stupid and doomed. But because the project is being fueled by StableCorporateMoney it keeps going and going, only getting stupider, and the old programmer is complicit in the stupidity because they are addicted to StableCorporateMoney.
posted by Sauce Trough at 3:02 PM on September 16, 2011 [3 favorites]

That's a good description of many creative jobs. From my experience, people will only delay gratification to that extent when they're young

I can't agree with Popular Ethics! In film, it's the old guys who constantly push for perfection, not the kid with a Red camera and a not-so-novel idea. I see a LOT of bad student films, made by people who think their work is brilliant. Trust me, Haskell Wexler knows how to frame a shot. One reason that even the B movies from the studio days look so good is that the people who made them had a lot of experience. I think most creative types work harder when they get older because they know how hard it is to try to make something beautiful and meaningful, as opposed to beginners who think everything they do is genius. Until they really look at it.
posted by Ideefixe at 3:36 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Disappointing, I thought this was going to be about tech entrepreneurs' kids who are literally locked in the basement.
posted by Joe Chip at 3:59 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's a shame that these presumably talented kids are wasting their energy on uncreative and essentially trivial projects. If this article is any indication, the money and the hype are focused on products that even their creators don't think much of. That doesn't seem healthy to me -- not for the programmers, and not for the economy.
posted by twirlip at 4:06 PM on September 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

photoslob, you're never too big to be a hack, even if you're "Dan FREAKING Winters." In fact, art directors should really expect more than hack work from him. But sometimes, they're only in it for the money.

As for "going back to whatever it is I normally do," I normally get paid when I write photo criticism or do art direction for pro photographers. But no charge for this one.

So let me explain this issue one more time. A photograph is a reconstruction of a specific set of elements that happen around a camera. I still remember a lecture from my art school professor, several decades ago. He said that when you load a camera with film, set an f/stop and a shutter speed, and focus on the subject, you have a only a small number of choices to make, even if you use different combinations of aperture and shutter speed. Now add in that you can shoot the subject from almost any angle, now you've got an infinite number of choices. Now you can choose film, developing, lighting, and the moment you take the picture, and you've got more possible choices than even a chess grandmaster has to think about. And yet, this guy shoots head on with softbox lighting and flat white backgrounds just like Avedon. You know, even with that set of exact constraints, your work doesn't have to copy someone else. Look at what Jill Greenberg does with the same basic "straight photography" approach, but working with lighting that isn't totally flat. Look at some other straight photography, even the simplest, like Andy Warhol's Polaroid portraits, they're quite similar in approach to Avedon but they deliver a totally different result that is distinctive of Warhol.

So if you're going to do a photograph that almost exactly replicates the style of another photographer, that is obviously a specific choice. It has to be done intentionally. You are not saying "I'm Dan FUCKING Winters," you're saying "I'm Richard FUCKING Avedon." And you're not. He's dead. Avedon was the only person that could say that. His portraiture style was iconic even before Winters was born. When the style is that iconic, when you treat a President the same way you treat a 12 year old girl, with the same stark, unflinching eye, you are turning a moment into a monumental event.

Now back to the FPP. If you're going to frame the subject in the style of some other photographer in an attempt to make the subject as iconic and monumental as Avedon's portraits, you run the risk of veering off into parody. And I think these photos do. These kids already think of themselves as being the next Gates or Jobs. These photos are as ridiculous as the egos of the college kids they portray. And that was clearly not Winters' intention. I mean, seriously now, these are like 19 and 20 year old kids, poking fun at Zuckerberg for being over the hill.

Yes, we jaded old coders and photogs can smirk at these kids' naivety, and how youth is wasted on the young. And that's only natural, from the way it's presented. It becomes a ridiculous parody to everyone except the youthful hacker audience that wishes to be monumentalized like this, or anyone else who buys into the WIRED magazine fantasy milleu. The tone of the article is bad enough, but the photos on top are like a sledge hammer trying to drive home a point. I'm not sure anyone involved with this article really understood the point. This story was written from inside the bubble, when it really needed a broader perspective.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:15 PM on September 16, 2011 [6 favorites]

My cousin is one of the kids in there (and one of the photos).

It bothers me that they focused on "the boys" and didn't seem to even try to get any women in the article. They do exist. Maybe they just didn't fit the article's thesis.
posted by girlhacker at 6:07 PM on September 16, 2011 [6 favorites]

Re the critiques of the photographs which I still love: I feel like they are the perfect representation of the spirit of the article. They jump out as real people who work hard no matter the background or lack of. To me, they would look good manipulated down to b&w (maybe with some sharp filters...heh.)

girlhacker, yep, the absence of girl coders crossed my mind.
posted by maggieb at 7:02 PM on September 16, 2011

girlhacker: "It bothers me that they focused on "the boys" and didn't seem to even try to get any women in the article."

Oh, they're there:

"The thump of music and the laughter of females pipe in through the open windows, signals from a far-off universe."

Sigh.
posted by kristi at 8:45 PM on September 16, 2011 [2 favorites]

Two of the best developers I have ever worked with were women, as well as the professor that taught me x86 assembly. I have no doubt that women can be just as monomaniacal and driven as men. Women get short shrift by young developers who see them as accessories or decorations, it is really a shame, because old guys like me will hire them to work, and end up with a programmer who can stand against anyone.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:36 AM on September 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

I kind of dislike the exclusive focus on Stanford alone. There are lots of other (better) colleges out there full of geeks in the CS department. Although my general impression is that the ones at Stanford are the ones most desperate to start a company; which I guess is what the article is focusing on.
posted by destrius at 3:06 AM on September 17, 2011

I kind of dislike the exclusive focus on Stanford alone. There are lots of other (better) colleges out there full of geeks in the CS department. Although my general impression is that the ones at Stanford are the ones most desperate to start a company; which I guess is what the article is focusing on.

Yeah, it’s kind of a shame that the author here couldn’t get off his ass and drive 45 minutes up to Berkeley. He’d find ten times as many CS geeks to talk to.

That said, I’m ready for things to calm down a bit — Color really shouldn’t have gotten $41 million. Everyone thinks they can come up with the next shiny social-media site and make a fortune. Silicon Valley needs less of that and more ideas that really change the world.
posted by spitefulcrow at 10:20 AM on September 17, 2011