Aesthetics matter
Daniel Lemire's blog
I gave a talk last week at a software shop. Two hundred engineers were present. I wore a tie. The man who invited me wore a tie. Can you guess how the 200 engineers were dressed? Yeah. You guessed it. They all picked up a t-shirt that they found under their bed.
I attended a large programming conference in Denver a few weeks ago. I shared a picture someone took of me with a friend back in Montreal. She said that my shoes were too casual. I told her: Never mind my shoes; I am the only one with a jacket and a tie in the whole place.
I have had the pleasure of attending a great many PhD defenses. The typical attire for someone seeking to get their PhD is an ugly t-shirt and old sneakers.
I won’t pretend that I dress well. Many people dress much better than I do. But I try to pay attention to how I look, a bit. My sons will tell you that I urge them not to show up in a professional setting with a wrinkled t-shirt.
Why would it matter? After all, many of these people with wrinkled t-shirts out-earn me by a factor of 5 or 10. They drive cars that I could not afford. They fly first class while I am in coach.
A colleague of mine was grading programming assignments, and he remarked that some students do not understand, intuitively, that code should generally be indented. We had a blast when I showed him that researchers often submit papers with pseudocode that is just randomly laid out on the page.
Why does it matter how the code looks? If it works, it works, right?
I live near Montreal. I think that it is one of the ugliest cities. It is in a constant state of disrepair. Little attention is paid to how things are going to look.
Why would it matter? You just drive around.
Why would anyone write a book entitled Beautiful Code?
Why would anyone build a house in Venice, a house on water? Sure, it offers some protection from invaders, but why are the houses not fortified? Why did they make the city so elegant?
Why would it matter? Because, as Marshall McLuhan so aptly put it, “the medium is the message.” The form of a medium embeds itself in any message it transmits, creating a symbiotic relationship whereby the medium influences and transforms the perception of the content. In the case of code, it’s not just its execution that counts, but its presentation that invites collaboration and clarity. Likewise, your tie or jacket are no mere ornaments: they are the medium through which you assert a professional presence, an attention to detail that elevates the exchange. And for Montreal, this persistent ugliness is no trivial matter; it is the medium of collective neglect that erodes everyday well-being, turning a simple drive into a diffuse experience of gloom. Aesthetics is no superfluous luxury: it is the invisible vector that amplifies or diminishes everything we build.
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