Book Review: Geek Sublime Writing Fiction Coding Software by Vikram Chandra...

 

Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software (Nov 2013)
Published by: Faber & Faber
Author: Vikram Chandra (Or Vikram <underscore> Chandra as the cover says!)
Acquired from: Melbourne City Library
BLM Rating 8.5 / 10

Back when I listed the books on my reading pile, I mentioned "Geek Sublime..." right at the top and said
"...Vikram Chandra intrigues me as a writer. I cannot pin him down to any genre..."

He continues that thread of intrigue through this latest work on non-fiction. Amazon (amazingly enough) classifies this under "engineering". Maybe they did not look past "Coding Software" on the title, but even the first few pages would have made it clear it is not! Having said that however, it is nearly impossible to classify this book.  You could say it is Vikram's memoir - of growing up in India, moving to the US to study and his early days as a writer while he supported himself by working as a programmer. But you turn a page and it seamlessly transitions into being a history of computers, computer programming and the role of women in the industry. Keep reading and you realise you have moved into the history of the ancient Indian language Sanskrit, even a bit of Indian vs. American culture. He speaks of the beauty of poetry and the workings of logic gates, the dilemma of an Indian programmer in America, gender imbalance in the industry to gender politics of the British Raj in India, of writing being his vocation and coding his obsession. And you come away from the book almost breathless with the combination of persuasive prose and fascinatingly stimulating ideas.

Paul Graham, a programmer and venture capitalist, wrote in 2003 "... of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike...".

Chandra quotes this at the start of his book and then takes us on a journey exploring the topic. He talks of programmers wanting elegance and beauty in their code and compares it to the beauty of prose, poetry and language. He explores many lanes and bylanes on this journey. Glimpses of his life in India, life as an Indian programmer in America, history of computers and of Sanskrit, of tantric sexual practice and even the 'hippie capitalism' of the Silicon Valley where "digital overlords combine the social and sexual attitudes of San Francisco bohemianism with a neo-liberal passion for idealized free markets and unchecked profit-making" - the number of topics he researches and describes is mind boggling! His primer of how logic gates work is fascinating and made me spend a good few hours looking up more LEGO logic gates on randomwraith than I probably should have. And who knew that the world's first programmers on the ENIAC machine were all women? It was only as the industry was professionalised that women became marginal. Then again in India, where the general gender gap is dismal, women programmers form over 30% of the industry compared to 21% in America. Did you even know there are computer languages called 'brainfuck' (I kid you not) and 'Malbolge' (designed solely to be the most difficult language to program in)? Snippets of  interesting information abound throughout the book on topics as diverse as technology, philosopy, history, programming, linguistics and sociology!

Reprogramming the ENIAC (Photo by US Army)

Chandra talks a lot about Sanskrit, its logical nature as well as its aesthetic appeal. Panini's 2,500 year old text on Sanskrit grammar with rules of generating words, he says, is "the first known instance of the application of algorithmic thinking to a domain outside of logic and mathematics". It is a language that is so structural and rule bound that is often known as the seedbed of modern high level programming languages. Yet, it is also a language of poetry of exquisite beauty. If Sanskrit can combine rule bound structure with beauty and elegance - can computer code do the same?

The author draws on his own diverse experiences to come to his own conclusion by the end of the book, but read this book for much more than that. Read it for the sweeping ideas it studies and proposes, for the vast amount of information this lets you learn, for its originality and most importantly for its own persuasive and melodic prose - an object of beauty on its own.

Baju @ BLM