From Programmer to Poet

I recently heard from William Roetzheim (www.Level4Press.com), a former contributor to the magazine I worked for. He writes:

"In the 'old days' of software development, the software people I worked with were almost all artists of one kind or another. I mean this literally, not figuratively. They played musical instruments, sang, painted, and so on. We all saw programming as just another creative outlet. Now, I think more and more of those people are turning their backs on what software has evolved into and returning to their roots in art."

Roetzheim, who founded and sold two software companies, started out programming on a Commodore 64. Over the decades he witnessed "the heyday of the industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to the greed forced onto us in the late 1990s, and finally to the collapse of software as art and the conversion of people to cogs in a software factory of the 2000s. ...the software industry has lost all of the appeal that attracted me to it in the beginning. It lost the artistic camaraderie, the naive but exhilarating sense that anything was possible, and it lost the magic."

Here's a poem from his new book, Thoughts I Left Behind.

Artificial Life

I saw a demonstration
of a simulated girlfriend.
The computer imitation
carried on a conversation.
Over time, she might disrobe.

I saw an exhibition
of a proudly prancing puppy
well, a robotic rendition
with a puppy-like cognition.
Over time, he might learn tricks.

I saw an Internet creation
of a planet and its people,
an artificial nation
with disaster and starvation.
Over time, you might be King.

I watch
the clicking clock.
Sign
the dotted line.
Begin
to spin the chair.
Sharpen pencils
again
and again.
Over time, I too
might come alive.