Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree? Tell us your story

1. We've been trained to critique, and communicate issues constructively. This is absolutely essential to working quickly, the sooner you realize there is an existential problem with what you're doing, the sooner you can work through them. I've become an absolute user story master because of what I learned at art school.

2. Self management, I prefer to work alone because I get the best work done when I can juggle and understand all the variables of the task. This forces me to be adept at a lot of different things but also means that as a developer you can pretty much leave me alone unless I really suck at something.

3. Asking why all the time, critiquing is one thing but the worst experiences I've had are when other developers say things like "It's always been like this". For example, I came into a shop where their build process had an SCSS linter that would error if anyone tried to use a color that wasn't a variable. This ended up creating the habit of a single stylesheet with around 200 slight adjustments of colors. Critical thinking is whats important for building systems with low technical debt, and I think artists are able to realize something is turning into technical debt much quicker than their engineer counterparts.

The tradeoff is that I have a huge communication gap with traditional computer scientists, I really have to work and study algorithms on my spare time and I still struggle heavily with mathematical notations.

He said, he didn't think this would go hand in hand, but after he saw some algorithm stuff from a friend he was surprised how easy it was, so he switched from composing to coding algos.

It was about a decade ago or so. I was finishing high school and contemplating studying graphic design or animation in a renowned school in my hometown (Les Gobelins, Paris). I befriended freshmen who were being sucked up into Flash animation trend and we started working for short-lived startups as Flash animators.

Then I discovered the works of Joshua Davis', Erik Natzke's, Robert Hodgin's (aka flight404) and it was the first epiphany — I started coding. It became a part-time job and a time-consuming intellectual pursuit up till now.

I knew nothing about it, but chose Fashion Design out of curiosity and because it's an interest I could share with my sister, but kept programming everyday. I never regretted it. In some way, it's very much like architecture (technical + philosophical + social impact). I even worked as a fashion designer for a short period right after, but it was not for me.

I learned HTML, CSS and PHP, then AS3, all thanks to the massive amount of literature available. I worked part time, paying part of my school tuition. When I graduated, I used my connections within the fashion industry to work as a Flash dev in a creative agency specialized in luxury brands.

Today I'm a full-stack web dev doing mostly JS, Python and studying Lispy dialects. I currently hold a position in an academic lab, where we blend design, research and engineering to study social sciences-related question within large data sets.

I'm studying math and algorithms to make a transition for the web to other scope of interest.

That sounds very interesting! Care to elaborate?

On the other hand, art has definitely influenced me as a person. It’s like meditating, when I visit a museum, an art gallery, or even watching art online I feel very much relaxed and contempt. The other thing that's great about art is that it helps you understand yourself better. Art is a sentimental stimulant and as such helps you explore your inner self and your emotions.

I knew literally nothing about code at this point. But I struggled through it with W3schools (this was 2011, before the fancy learning platforms). The hardest part was fighting my own lack of confidence, because I had been made to believe that I was artistic and therefore bad at math and science. I never realized until that point how deeply I had absorbed this idea. Pushing past it has been a marvelous experience.

Anyways, I realized that I really enjoyed writing code. The next year, in 2012, I started learning JavaScript. About a year and a half later, I met someone who got me a junior dev job at a startup in NYC. Been doing the startup thing ever since.

As far as applying my artistic knowledge to IT work, I'd say it's been a struggle to stop applying it. At first, my approach was very creative, and I quickly saw how disastrous that is when you're working in a team. I would catch myself trying to find some other way of solving a problem than my co-workers, because I didn't want to "copy" their work. Solving artistic problems means finding your own unique solution, but solving programming problems means almost the exact opposite.

There are other areas in which my creative side does come out though. I recently had a job where we had to reverse engineer a financial API that was not public. This sort of quasi-hacking is kind of perfect for creative people because it forces you to think outside the box.

Now that I teach and coach leadership (not IT work, so different than the question asked), I find art training tremendously valuable. Our educational system is strong on intellectually challenging people, but socially and emotionally teaches more passivity and compliance.

Creating art forces you to express your emotions, be sensitive to others', to face criticism on what you consider beautiful, to face vulnerabilities, to grow and learn in ways that lecture, problem sets, case studies, reading, and writing papers don't promote.

I also took some acting classes. Their structure has become the structure of how I teach, which gets very positive reviews from my students. They commonly comment that they never learned this way before, that they didn't know they could learn what they do in my courses, that they value it deeply, that it's immediately practical, and they wish they had more of it.

We teach fields that are active, social, expressive, emotional, and performance-based differently than academic subjects and that training teaches genuineness, authenticity, self-awareness, and other things that traditional academic education doesn't.

After getting through all the courses that interested me I dropped out to travel and then fell into a few interesting jobs that kept me otherwise distracted from going back. I would 100% do it all again. The only thing that I'm super upset about is that I did't fall into the live coding community while I was there (this was literally happening at the same uni https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY1FSsUV-8c).

One mindset that it solidified in me was when building things come up with the concept first, then figure out how to make that happen. That may be easy, or it may not. But at least what you're making will be worthwhile.

I work in the audiovisual industry today running an R&D lab for a systems integrator. We create presentation spaces, high-end corporate facilities and VC suites (which are still apparently a thing), a little bit of broadcast work, some stadium projects and lots of large format displays. When I'm tied into projects I'm usually end up rolling with some systems engineering, DSP programming, a bit of embedded dev, UI work and network engineering.

About to begin something new and rather exciting too.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a great job with not much but a portfolio of my work. I couldn't be happier with my job.

Today i apply my artistic knowledge a lot when i do prototypes or when in the company there's a lack of designers. The other good thing is that when i enjoy myself building little games or web apps, i can create the assets myself.

After studies I was working very seriously, created a strong portfolio, was specializing in branding.

But design (and other types of (applied) arts) is very uncertain thing. In design for you 2+2=4, but for your client 2+2=7 and for the target audience 2+2=46. There are no objective criteria how to measure graphic design.

In programming 2+2=4.

Another bad thing about design is that non-designers are able to create design. Yes, their design is bad, but still they can do it by themselves.

In programming there is a big entrance barrier. That is why clients never DIY. That is why clients have bigger respect for programmers.

Before studying arts, I was in tech (when I was 11-14 years old). I did some linux, tried C++, web design etc.

Now I am 31. The last 3 years I'm mostly in development. Now I also do front end coding.

Arts can be very hard. Artists lack money, lack respect...

Yeah, you can do web design and get some decent money for it, but it is so mechanical and superficial. Once you learn it, there is nothing new to learn anymore. Just repeat the same. Follow some trends, that's it.

I like programming because there is a lot to learn. There will always be something new and exciting to learn. That's not the case with design.

Anyways, I really don't want to go back to graphic design and work with clients. But good that I got these skills. Now I can create an app (idea, design, development) completely on my own.

The increase in respect and money that i was earning as even an entry-level developer was mind blowing to me. And since i enjoyed the actually act of coding so much, the choice was such an easy one to make.

I got my degrees in the early 80s, just as the microcomputer revolution was heating up. Up until then, I was totally unaware of computers and computing. Math and science didn't really interest me growing up.

After leaving college, I got an entry level job as an artist that was fairly menial: rendering toilet seat covers and drapes for a local department store for local paper B&W advertisements. Left there to work for a now-defunct children's book publisher in 1982 or so. Was illustrating teaching aids as an in-house illustrator. A year or so later, the company started a division to write educational software for the Apple][. This was the first time that I really got to see and interact with computers.

Well damned if i didn't fall in love with the little things! I immediately got friendly with the developers writing the software (one of whom I know and work with to this day!) and asked if they would teach me how to program. This meant learning 6502 assembly language. So after working a second job for six months to save up for an Apple][c, I really hunkered down and learned. As it was, I was burning out on the "art on demand", cranky art director world of in-house art departments and decided that I'd like to get a job as a developer full time. So I basically stretched the truth about my background and landed a job writing Mac software (in 68K assembler) for a printer company in 1985-86. From there I was off and running.

As far as using art in my everyday work, I am certainly drawn to GUI work and can both design and code interfaces if needed. In working with UI and interaction designers, it is often easier for me to see what they are after and to implement the "spirit" of their work, so in that sense, my art background does really come in handy. (this is starting to sound like an interview answer--sorry about that)

Also, I've never completely given up art and still work on illustration (and writing) side projects to this day. It's the only way for me to let off certain creative steam.

The downside for people in this field is that we need just one for a team of 25, whereas we have nearly 18 engineers. Competition could be fierce for these jobs, but I'll never start another company without a design co-founder.

I started out as a graphic designer, moved into web design and then into programming.

My degree, and study of lithography, painting, sculpture, etching and more has made me the professional I am today. Studying art is all about the need for rigorous process and attention to detail in a creative workflow. This is what programming is. I have no doubt that my education and experience as an artist has improved my ability to think critically and solve problems as a programmer.

Regarding the impact of my art background on the job: im recognized as the team expert on making charts, visualizations, and documentation. I have been able to improve our processes by applying a clean visual approach to describe and document our work.

I taught myself programming (C++) when I was 15 (1995). I made simple puzzle games on my Mac.

The internet got big and I got into HTML and JS.

I didn't go to college for Computer Science b/c it sounded like I'd end up wearing a white coat and working at IBM.

I went to Art School b/c it was the closest thing to programming. Programming and Art are the same in that you create something from nothing.

When coding became "cool" (2004 ish) I picked it up again.

I realized that it is more important to have width than depth in many circumstances. That is to say, knowing a little about a lot of things instead of knowing a lot about one thing.

For example, in my web dev work, I need to be able to cooperate with the graphic designers who provide the designs for the product to me. Being able to talk their language and understand the tools they use is tremendously helpful. I'm also able to apply the principles of visual design in my own projects instead of needing a designer to review all my work.

And I still try to do art on the side. After I changed my major, I took a printmaking class and discovered my favorite kind of art. I'm planning on doing more of that after I graduate.

I also took a shorter computer science degree. I'm only half joking when I say the skills I obtained studying history is more applicable in my work as a developer, than what I learned studying computer science.

Her slides always look amazing. I can't comment on how else her artistic background has influenced her work.

My design background informs a lot of what I do now especially in the UI/UX realm. I feel that it's an asset and sets me apart from other devs who might have taken a more traditional path.

The funny part is that I have a computer engineering degree though..

It would be great if you could write a blog post of how you create one of your pieces from scratch. It doesn't have to go into every single detail. At least enough so that those of us that would like to imitate you can learn from you. Something like this would be useful [1]. It doesn't have to be a film tutorial, just a blog post would be enough. Thanks.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb4Jd_x3_jg

PS. If you know of any resources that you think would be very helpful to a beginner like me I would be very grateful if you shared them with us.

2014 spanish Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc0rUsUjIIo

2015 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67YfSzkmDgw

The greatest mistake people make about computer programming is that they believe it's an engineering discipline. It's not at all: It creative fine art - just like drawing or painting.

There was another post about what you would do differently if you could and it would be more creativity but with a scientific twist to it, I don't know... maybe science fiction? Maybe teaching. Maybe sailing like those kids 'la vagabonde'. So inspiring.

Having a solid computer science base is not impossible to achieve without a degree, but it is pretty easy to tell when a system has been architected by somebody with masters or PhD in computer science as opposed to a self taught guy.

Disclaimer: I'm a mix of both, but no PhD here. I had to work with some and they were amazing for architecture, probably not so much for the practical side of things of doing commercial software.

I never expected to go back to school after high school because it was so boring. It wasn't traumatic, I had lots of friends and many good times and learned one or two things, but it was mostly just a poor use of time. And they made me wake up so damn early.

I got my first full time job in IT at 17 and had almost 5 years of experience (tech support -> jr. sysadmin/datacenter stuff) before taking my first sociology class on a whim with a friend, expecting to hate it. Much to my surprise, they treated me like an adult, and I had a great time. Seattle Central Community College was a very good school for me.

I got an AA in a 7 quarters (1 calendar year = 4 quarters, by the seasons, more or less...) and had a high enough GPA that I was automatically accepted into a BA program at UW in the math department. Shortly after, I switched to modular logic. Shortly after, I switched to philosophy. Shortly after, I switched to and settled on English, and spent almost 3 years completing it (while working part time) and took it pretty seriously. I did all of my homework and went to the vast majority of my classes and even took notes and went to office hours and study groups.

5 years of full time work in a 100% OSS datacenter/ISP (with root) left me with (significantly?) more skills than your average BA CS/CE grad (and having interviewed a lot of them, I am pretty confident in this). One big exception being algorithms and not as much programming experience. But I had a lot of practical "real-world day to day stuff" knowledge.

For that reason, I purposefully only took the one required "computer" credit I needed as part of my humanities degree. I was able to talk a nice CS teacher into letting me into a 3rd-year level Java class to improve my OO skills. I met none of the prereqs (like, not even remotely close), but within 10 minutes of talking to him in his office, he waived them all and let me take it. I think I got a 3.2.

The English dept. was great and I had a great advisor and so many great teachers and fellow classmates. I ended up taking mostly night classes because they had more adults and were a significantly more interesting group to me. I drifted toward English because "I like books" and, for some reason, really enjoyed reading all of those painful literary tomes and busting out all of the essays. So many essays. I did well and was dean's list almost every quarter. I stayed 2 quarters longer than I needed to, on purpose.

After graduating I immediately went back to IT and have been doing ops (OSS system/network engineering) ever since -- about 10 years of it. Still working on our own hardware in datacenters across the world, complimented by cloud services here and there. Stuff I was doing as a 12 year old (ie: minicom to talk to stuff via serial) is still stuff I do at least once or twice a year.

I mean, I guess I briefly looked into the job market that an English degree usually veers towards. Teaching? Writing? Journalism? Technical writing? Manage a bookstore? IDK. But realistically, since I was planning on staying in (expensive) Seattle, the choice to go back to IT-land was pretty obvious.

The last thing I'll say is, you'd be surprised how useful an English degree is in the IT world. I mean, English is basically taking this big pile of words, trying to make sense of it all, and then trying to use them to state interesting things about people or objects or whatever. Software, on the other hand, is often about sifting through a lot of documentation, working with a lot of different APIs and config syntaxes and databases and init systems and revision control and centralized configurations and dynamic scaled platforms. Then putting it all together into something useful for some developer for some company (ie: their platform!). Or something terrible -- like an ad server.

No regrets what so ever. If/when I retire, I may go back for an MFA, and maybe even a PhD in English lit!

Actually, probably most useful were the presentation techniques, including matting & mounting techniques we had to learn to properly present photos as used by galleries. This translated directly to my web presentation techniques.