Musicians and Programmers Pt. 2

So it's been over a month since the last post in this series on musicians and programmers.  I suppose that means that it's about time to continue.  At the end of my previous post, I left you with a couple of questions.  At this point I would like to answer some of those.

First, what makes a "good" program?  This is arguably a difficult question as different people regard different things as good.  We can't simply base it off of popularity as there are plenty of terrible programs that are wildly successful (anyone remember Farmville?)  On the other hand, we would be remiss to say that programs that are popular and successful are not good programs.  Perhaps an apt way of gauging the "goodness" of a program is its ability to affect a large group of people.  Again it ends up being quite arguable as to what constitutes a "good" program.  Another example is Google.  Quite likely one of the most well known websites in the world, it connects humanity to reservoirs of information the likes of which never existed previously.  Surely it must be a "good" program.  It affects millions of people daily, serving billions of searches per day to people in over 100 countries, with trillions of searches per year (see this).  And yet, an article like this was published in 2008.  If you think about it, it is actually true to an extent.  The way we receive, parse, and then analyze data has drastically changed since the advent of Google and the accessible web.  That's not to say that we are or aren't any smarter due to Google but it's an interesting thought exercise to carry out.  In more recent history we have Facebook.  A site with billions of users and yet, a single bug can wipe out large regions of the internet.  What I'm trying to say is that even the most influential websites and programs have their dark sides and that makes it increasingly difficult to understand what a "good" program really is.

Let us take the same approach to the next question, what makes a "good" piece of music?  Is it the tension we feel while listening to the piece?  Is it the technical prowess required to perform it?  Is it the popularity that it garners?  To an extent all of those are used when we personally decide what a "good" piece of music is.  For example, I find this piece to be an absolute masterpiece and others would find it trash.  By the way, if you think that, you're trash.  I find it to be a really technically difficult piece while maintaining a beautiful melody.  In addition there is incredible tension at parts and is an incredibly popular cello concerto, the recording of which is by one of the best cellists in recent history.  At the same token we have Gangnam Style by PSY which is the single YouTube video with the most views.  Undeniably popular, but it's an incredibly shallow song musically.  However, that begs the question whether popularity or depth is a better indicator of what a "good" piece of music is.  That's an answer I don't really have, but if you realize, this is the same predicament that plagues what determines a "good" program.

I suppose at this point I've indirectly answered the last question I posed before which is, does everyone have a consensus on what constitutes a "good" program.  The answer being obviously no.  It's terribly difficult to gauge what a "good" program is.  We can't just say that a program without bugs is "good" because any large piece of software is almost guaranteed to have bugs, some of which can cause catastrophic repercussions as I pointed out earlier.  I hope this post made you a bit more curious as to what this section will bring.  If not, as always you're free to read and browse whatever you like.  Until next time, keep your mind open and remember that things always have multiple facets to them.

--CsMiREK