Eric is debating whether coding is an art form. On the one hand, coders these days have artistic temperaments — they see themselves as prima donnas rather than as engineers. They keep artistic hours. And code unquestionably has an aesthetic element to it. People who don't code have been able to pick his code out from that of others by asking themselves, "Which is more like Eric?"
On the other hand, coding is purely quantitative, without any real qualitative element seen as meaningful. It is purely inexpressive in all the ways we think of "expression." It is purely functional.
I wish I were listening to him have this argument in another bar.
Eric and I are enjoying dinner at the Lalita Thai Restaurant & Bar. But the bar fits the conversation the way a Hawaiian shirt fits a Buddhist monk.
Lalita doesn't feel like an SF bar at all. It's too spacious, too decorated (but still bland, like the dimly lit foyer of a regional health spa). The dining area's tables make a bigger impression than the bar does, even though the bar is legitimately large and sufficiently independent to warrant equal time on the marquee. It's big, rectangular, competently stocked, offers two TVs turned to the game, has some small side tables and even a couple of communal tables and couches. But the cumulative effect has no sparks of life.
This is a lively, quirky conversation.
It should be said that the food is excellent: Dinner succeeded on all counts. But the drinks, the drinks. The three pages of "featured cocktails" exactly mirror the standard "tiki-bar" curriculum at a Nebraska bar school. Almost all of them come in under $10 and aren't bad for tiki drinks, so that's definitely something — but it's also not the point.
I try to tolerate tiki-bars, I really do. But they're problematic enough as a stand-alone genre: Am I really supposed to believe that Thai and Chinese drinks are virtually identical to the ones white people designed in 1962 to represent Polynesian culture in discount-booze form? What the hell is going on here?
Thailand produces sugarcane-based whiskey. There are vineyards in Thailand, too. There are many, many ingredients commonly used in Thai cuisine — lemongrass, ginger, kaffir lime leaves, chilis, basil, tamarind — which any competent mixologist could turn into a signature drink. I suppose Thailand has the same claim to the coconut in coconut rum that everybody else does, but is a bar supposed to be proud of that?
I can't tell a Thai restaurant what "authentic" Thai drinks are, but I can say that people who aren't explicitly tiki-bar fanatics and still limit themselves to a tiki-bar menu are selling themselves short.
"I think I know what the issue is," Eric says. "It's that so many people who would otherwise go into the arts, or a subsection of the arts like graphic design or audio production, are now going into code instead."
I stop drinking my adequate Wild Orchid (coconut rum, melon liqueur, grenadine, orange juice, pineapple juice) and give him a quizzical look. This I have not heard before.
"I thought tech was being ruined by bros coming in who would otherwise be trying to conquer Wall Street," I say.
Eric waves that away. "I think the bro thing is actually aspirational for techies: I think it's who they try to be rather than who they are, because they think that's who everyone admires. But actually, the move into coding has devastated the fine arts, not finance. And it's the presence of so many people who would otherwise be trying to create something expressive that turns what is, ultimately, a completely quantitative, closed pursuit, into something that periodically seems artful and alive."
I gape. Could that be true?
Eric and I leave wanting to like Lalita more than we do. There's such potential for it to be unique, and tremendous fun — if it can distinguish itself from every other bar that uses the same goddamn menu. Or if it cares to.
I wouldn't urge people away from it as is, I'd just tell you to go there for dinner, or to eat after a night of drinking somewhere else.
"I think there won't really be a need for many human coders in the future," Eric tells me. "We'll be able to describe what we need and the algorithms will be able to write it themselves."
If true, all that will be left will be artistic temperaments, straining to be heard.
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