Manifesto of the Futurist Programmers

From: paul@balla.asd.sgi.com (Paul Haeberli)
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 21:29:20 -0700


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        The Manifesto of the Futurist Programmers
        
        To the young programmers of the World!
        
        The cry of the rebellion we launch here, in which
        we firmly implant our ideals alongside those of
        the Futurist painters, does not come from a little
        aesthetic minded clique but, on the contrary,
        expresses the violent desire that seethes in the
        veins of every creative programmer today.
        
        We want to fight to the bitter end against the
        fanatical, thoughtless, and purely snobbish
        religious faith in the past, stoked by the
        nefarious existence of the academic journals. We
        are rebelling against the sluggishly supine
        admiration for old operating systems, old
        languages, archaic standards, and against the
        enthusiasm for everything bug-ridden, rotting with
        code bloat, and eaten away by obsolescence. And we
        judge unjust - criminal in fact - the habitual
        disdain for programs whose construction is
        different and original, new, throbbing with life.
        
        Comrades! We declare to you that triumphant
        progress in the other sciences has brought about,
        in humanity as a whole, changes so profound as to
        dredge out an abyss between the past and us free
        creatures who are securely confident in the
        radiant magnificence of the future.
        
        We are nauseated by the despicable sloth that,
        ever since the 1970's, has let our programmers
        survive only through an incessant reprogramming of
        the glories of the past.
        
        For the professionals of other disciplines,
        programming is still a land of the dead, an
        immense Pompeii still whitening with sepulchers.
        But programming is being reborn, and in the wake
        of its political resurgence an intellectual
        resurgence is taking place. In the expressways of
        our teeming cities, the pistons of our automobiles
        are fired by the spark of microprocessors. In the
        land of the couch potatoes, computers control the
        appliances of our daily existence. In the fields
        of traditional technology one is struck today by a
        new elan, by lightning-bright inspirations of
        something utterly new.
        
        Only that programming is vital which finds its own
        elements in the people who use it. Our forebears
        drew material for their programming from the
        religious atmosphere weighing heavily on their
        programs. We must now draw out inspiration from
        the tangible miracles of contemporary life, from
        the portable CD players that bring digital music
        to the masses, from the supersonic airplanes which
        achieve speed of flight through lightness of
        weight, the portable television sets which are
        available throughout the world and boot in less
        time than any computer system, from the convulsive
        struggle for the conquest of the unknown. Then
        too, how can we remain indifferent to the frenetic
        activity of the great cities, to the utterly new
        psychology of programming that takes wing only
        after dark, to the febrile figures of the viveur,
        the cocotte, the hacker, the addicts to coffee?
        
        Because we propose to play our part in the badly
        needed renewal of all expressions of programming,
        we resolutely declare war against all those
        programmers and against all those institutions
        that, however they may camouflage themselves in
        raiment of pseudo-modernity, remain mired in
        tradition, in academicism, in a repugnant mental
        laziness.
        
        We call on all young programmers to unleash their
        scorn on the whole lot of brainless canaille who
        in Computer Science applaud a sick-making
        reflorescence of spineless classicism; who in MIT
        praise to the skies the neurotic cultists of
        network-transparent window systems - a
        hermaphroditic archaism; who in computer companies
        heap financial rewards on a pedestrian and blind
        manual skill a la 1974; who in Berkeley adulate
        programming typical of pensioned-off government
        functionaries; and in IBM glorify a farraginous
        rubbish heap turned out by fossilized alchemists!
        In short, we rise up against the superficiality,
        banality, and slovenly, corner-workshop facility
        that makes most of the widely respected computer
        programmers in every region of Silicon Valley
        worthy, instead, of the deepest contempt.
        
        Out with you, then, bought-and-sold rewriters of
        hack programs! Out with you, archeologists
        infected with chronic necrophilia! Out, atavistic
        executives, you complaisant panderers! Out, gouty
        academics, besotted and ignorant professors! Out!
        
        Go ask the high priests of the True Cult, those
        guardians of Structured Programming Rules where
        the works of Henry Massalin are to be seen today;
        ask them why the official operating systems do not
        even recognize the existence of self modifying
        code; ask them where the art of User Interface is
        appreciated at its true worth! . . . And who takes
        the trouble to think about the programmers who
        don't have twenty years of struggles and
        sufferings behind them but nonetheless are
        preparing works destined to bring honor to the
        homeland? Oh no, those critics ever ready to sell
        themselves have very different interests to
        defend! The eXhibitions, the standards cartels,
        and the superficial and never-disinterested
        purchasing departments are what condemn the
        programming art to what is, plainly speaking
        prostitution!
        
        And what should we say about the "Experts"? Come,
        come! Let's make an end once and for all to the
        layerists, the extensabilitists, the toolkit
        mongers, the librarians - We have put up with them
        quite enough, with all those impotent programmers
        of useless software!
        
        Let us make an end also to the wasters of disk
        space who clutter up our machines and profane our
        lightning-fast memories! An end to the quick-money
        architecture of the jobbers of the prefabricated!
        An End to the common run of program decorators,
        the fakers of technology, the masters of software
        cosmetology who sell themselves, and the slovenly
        and thick headed "managers"!
        
        And here are our CONCLUSIONS resolute and in a
        nutshell. With our enthusiastic adherence to
        Futurism we aim:
        
        1. To destroy the cult of the past, the obsession
        with all things old, academic pedantry, and
        formalism
        
        2. To cast our scorn profoundly on every last form
        of imitation
        
        3. To exalt every form of originality, even if
        foolhardy, even if extremely violent
        
        4. To bear bravely and proudly the smear of
        "madness" with which they try to gag all
        innovators
        
        5. To look on the lot of computer "scientists" as
        at one and the same time useless and dangerous
        
        6. To rebel against the tyranny of the words
        "extensible" and "reusable" expressions so elastic
        that they can just as easily be used to demolish
        the art of Atkinson, Baumgart and Deutsch as well
        
        7. To sweep out of the mental field of programming
        all themes and subjects already exploited
        
        8. To render and magnify the life of today,
        incessantly and tumultuously transformed by
        science triumphant
        
        Let the dead be buried in the deepest bowels of
        the earth! Let the future's threshold be swept
        clean of mummies! Make way for the young, the
        violent, the headstrong!
        
        Painter Umberto Boccioni (Milan) 
        Programmer Paul Haeberli (Menlo Park) 
        Programmer Bruce Karsh (Los Altos) 
	Programmer Ron Fischer (San Francisco)
        Programmer Peter Broadwell (Santa Cruz) 
	Programmer Tim Wicinski (Mountain View)
        
        June 15, 1991
        


        This manifesto is based on: U. Boccioni. The
        Manifesto of the Futurist Painters. Feb, 1910.
        From the book by: E. Coen. Umberto Boccioni.
        Abrams, 1988.





paul haeberli
paul@sgi.com