Re: PG: Hackers and Painters

[Matt Curtin <address@hidden>]

Steve Dekorte <steve@dekorte.com> writes:

> Would Picasso have made better paintings with someone looking over
> his shoulder and stepping in occasionally?

Perhaps.  Maybe Leonardo da Vinci's work got to the level that it did
in part through the direction that he received when he apprenticed
under Andrea del Verrocchio.  Leonardo working on an angel in the
"Baptism of Christ" wouldn't have been allowed to do just anything.
The angel might well have been his, but I cannot imagine that
Verrocchio wouldn't be allowed to look over Leonardo's shoulder,
offering guidance along the way.

Is there any documentation about how the collaboration actually worked
in practice?  Sure, we have no evidence that the great painters worked
on the same part of a painting, but do we know how much the chief got
to tell the others to do?  Paul?

(I find it somewhat odd that I'm arguing the side of this that I am,
as I'm fiercely independent.  On the other hand, my experience has
always been that when I can collaborate with the right person who
shares my values and goals, my work, and my collaborator's, is better
than either of us would have produced completely independently.  One
might get the inspiration initially and turn it into something really
cool, but as it grows and begins to take greater and more solid form,
getting input from many directions helps.  A hack drived from more
than one source...an "interhack". :-)

-- 
Matt Curtin, CISSP, IAM, INTP.  Keywords: Lisp, Unix, Internet, INFOSEC.
Founder, Interhack Corporation +1 614 545 HACK http://web.interhack.com/
Author of /Developing Trust: Online Privacy and Security/ (Apress, 2001)