The Art of Code

Software and technology have changed every aspect of the world we live in. At one extreme are the ‘mission critical’ applications - the code that runs our banks, our hospitals, our airports and phone networks. Then there’s the code we all use every day to browse the web, watch movies, create spreadsheets… not quite so critical, but still code that solves problems and delivers services.

But what about the code that only exists because somebody wanted to write it? Code created just to make people smile, laugh, maybe even dance? Maybe even code that does nothing at all? Code that was created just to see if it was possible?

Join Dylan Beattie - programmer, musician, and creator of the Rockstar programming language - for an entertaining look at the art of code. We’ll look at the origins of programming as an art form, from Conway’s Game of Life to the 1970s demoscene and the earliest Obfuscated C competitions. We’ll learn about esoteric languages and quines - how DO you create a program that prints its own source code? We’ll discover quine relays, code golf and generative art, and we’ll explore the phenomenon of live coding as performance - from the pioneers of electronic music to modern algoraves and live coding platforms like Sonic Pi.

This talk was presented at:

  • Sep 27, 2019: DevConf, Krakow, Poland • video
  • Oct 26, 2019: DDD East Midlands, Nottingham, UK • video
  • Nov 14, 2019: BuildStuff, Vilnius, Lithuania • video
  • Nov 17, 2019: BuildStuff, Kyiv, Ukraine
  • Jan 31, 2020: NDC London, London, UK • video
  • Jan 24, 2020: Flutter Europe, Warsaw, Poland • video
  • Mar 04, 2020: GOTO Oslo, Oslo, Norway
  • Mar 27, 2020: NDC Copenhagen, online
  • Apr 23, 2020: NDC Porto, online
  • May 28, 2020: DevSum, online
  • Jun 18, 2020: DotNext Piter, online
  • Jul 01, 2020: JPoint, online
Other talks by Dylan Beattie