The most surreal anouncement just went over our PA system.

[eataTREE]

"Which is more difficult, writing great poetry, or writing great code?
Join us for a debate between programmers and poets, in the auditorium at 2pm. Refreshments will be served."

Um... I'm speechless. I'd attend, except I have servers whose hands need holding.

[demnan]

1. Cool

As a programming English major I'd love that. I'm in both camps.

[yvr girl]

2. Your server has hands?

That's not standard equipment is it?

[eataTREE]

5. Metaphorical hands.

I swear, they know when I'm looking at them, and behave really well as long as I've got my eye on them.

Whenever I take a day off, everything goes to hell. That, or it happens at 3 AM, or on the weekend.

But during working hours, when I'm actually there and ready to respond? Never a bit of trouble.

I think my servers are related to cats.

[yvr girl]

9. A watched pot never boils and

a watched server never goes boom.

It sounds like they just get lonely without you. It's kind of 'sweet' actually.

[eataTREE]

10. What can I say. They're emotionally needy.

Perhaps I handled the screwdriver too roughly when I first assembled them.

[yvr girl]

18. So you have high maintenance servers

who don't like it rough. Got it.

[ret5hd]

3. submit some examples of perl poetry...

the two need not be exclusive

on edit-an example...

if ((light eq dark) && (dark eq light)
&& ($blaze_of_night{moon} == black_hole)
&& ($ravens_wing{bright} == $tin{bright})){
my $love = $you = $sin{darkness} + 1;
};

Which was derived from these lyrics, by Jim Steinman's song The Invocation.

If light were dark and dark were light
The moon a black hole in the blaze of night
A raven's wing as bright as tin
Then you, my love, would be darker than sin.

[eataTREE]

12. Yeah, but I've never seen a perl poem that actually *did* anything.

Now that would be impressive. Sort of like the Obfuscated C Contest entries that look like random bytes, but actually do useful things.

[ret5hd]

17. well, there is an obfuscated perl contest...

where the entries do have to do useful things, but the perl poetry contests just have to run and not crash.

[Occulus]

4. that sounds like a very interesting debate

I would have to argue code is harder to write than poetry, simply because finished code actually does something. You could have this "more difficult" debate over almost any two unrelated things:

"Which is harder, composing music or designing a building?"
"What's better- food or sex?"

Actualy, on that last one, they aren't always seperated....

[eataTREE]

6. Poetry does nothing?

I'd argue that it does.

However, the question of whether poetry or code is harder to create is not one I'd get into. The two require fundamentally different kinds of effort which are not easily compared. Sort of like asking whether it's easier to write a sonnet or dig a ditch.

[redqueen]

7. I want to work where you work

Vastly more interesting there, I can tell.

[skypilot]

11. And guess who'll be sitting next to you...

...writing you poetry? Bad poetry.:)

[redqueen]

14. Hey, even bad poetry is better than nothing.

:P

[skypilot]

15. At 9 o'clock in the morning?

:evilgrin:

[redqueen]

16. Sure!

Why not?

[mongo]

8. As an old COBOL programmer I wrote some great novels.

IF IT-IS-SATURDAY-NIGHT
PERFORM DEVIENT-SEXUAL-ACTS
UNTIL THE-SUN-COMES-UP.

[cheezus]

13. at least there's a way to TELL if code is good

poetry, on the other hand, is subjective