Vikram Chandra says that even though “computing has transformed our lives...the processes and cultures which produce software remain largely opaque, alien, unknown. He says “whenever I tell one of my fellow authors that I supported myself through the writing of my first novel by working as a programmer and a computer consultant, I evoke a response that mixes bemusement, bafflement, and a touch of awe, as if I’d just said that I could levitate...Many programmers, on the other hand regard themselves as artists.”
Vikram Chandra is the award-winning author of two novels and a collection of short stories and has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a writer. In his new book, “Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty,” he looks at the connection between these two worlds of art and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style, just as writers are, but do the words mean the same thing to both? And is it a coincidence that Chandra is drawn to two seemingly opposing ways of thinking? Exploring these questions, he creates a book that is part technology story and part memoir - exploring such topics as logic gates and literary modernism, the male machismo of geeks, the striking presence of an 'Indian Mafia' in Silicon Valley, the surprising connection between modern programming languages and the 2,500-year-old grammar of the Sanskrit language, the “exciting and terrifying“ world of synthetic biology, and yogic ideas about the nature of art and the self.
