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API's like music | 286 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
100% correct
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 12:34 PM EDT
Oracle are trying to copyright chords, if not the notes themselves. Uh oh here
comes the red mist again...

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • More like... - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 12:59 PM EDT
  • 100% correct - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 03:35 PM EDT
    • 100% correct - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 03:47 PM EDT
      • 100% correct - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 08:07 PM EDT
    • 100% correct - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 04:11 PM EDT
    • 100% correct - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 04:47 AM EDT
Music and APIs have opposite goals
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 02:03 PM EDT
A good API is one that is as functional as possible, as obvious as possible, and
contains as few surprises as possible. Given a perfect API, developers wouldn't
need to repeatedly look it up in the documentation because it would provide the
natural way of achieving the goals described by its names and signatures.
Creativity and originality in an API would unavoidably pull in the opposite
direction to these key and very deliberate goals.

In contrast to good APIs, "good" music (judged to be "good"
by artists and listeners) almost never has any functional goals, only emotive
and artistic ones. It has to appeal to emotion which is a highly subjective
reaction and cannot be determined functionally, and it has to be largely
original or else it is condemned as derivative or even plagiaristic. Some music
can occasionally have functional goals, such as the rhythm of a marching drum,
but such goals or purposes are not present in the music for entertainment of
today. Also, music that is deliberately functional would typically be shunned
by artists as non-creative, as well as despised by listeners if they realized
that they were being deliberately manipulated by functional music.

Also, it is important to note that the structural elements of music are nothing
more than a cultural framework of musical expectations, and vary greatly between
cultures and across the centuries. The fact that some rules constrain the
creativity of artists does not eliminate the inescapable requirement for
creativity that distinguishes virtually every single piece of "good"
music from every other. This contrasts dramatically with the goals in API
design, in which creativity is not only undesirable but even destructive of the
core functional goals.

Finally, I think we need to debunk the contention that "APIs are creative
because a good API requires skill to create". That is a non-logical
argument, because its conclusion does not follow from its premise. Good APIs
certainly require skill to create, but that is because high engineering
competency and many years of experience are required to make the APIs as
functional, logical, obvious, and self-describing as possible. That skill is
NOT used to make the API a creative and original work, as this would be highly
damaging to the functional purposes of an API.

Engineers certainly have creative talent, but that talent is not used to make
products like APIs manifestly creative, as that would tend to make them
unusable. In engineering design, creativity is employed in the form of
"lateral thinking" as a means of finding good functional
implementations, but certainly not to make the API a creative and original
expression. That would run counter to the requirements of every API on the
planet, as well as resulting in something akin to comedy.

I'm sure that XKCD could express this better than I. An API designed as a form
of creative expression would be a danger to coffee and keyboards right across
the entire world of computing.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

API's like music
Authored by: jvillain on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 07:39 PM EDT
The conventions of staffs, ledger-lines, bars for measures, notes, stems, and flags are API of the musical language.

I'm afraid I have to disagree. The above are the language. The API would be the various scales and chords built off of them. The implementation would be songs.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

API's like music
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 09 2012 @ 08:34 PM EDT

No. I think APIs are more like the rules of orchestration, i.e., that the B-flat clarinet is a tone below concert and that it plays notes in the ranges of its E to its F# 3 octaves higher. If one wants to put clarinet into the orchestration, those are the facts.

And looking at the facts does not turn the composition or orchestration into a derivative work of the text which shows the rules of orchestration.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

API's like music
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 10 2012 @ 02:19 AM EDT

Sounds like a fair argument to me: the following is an API for composing music..

class Bar { static Bar createBar(); Note addNote(NoteLength length, Tone tone); ... } ...

The API doesn't describe a specific piece of music (which is clearly copyrightable), but a way to compose music.

There are probably half-a-dozen sane ways of defining an API for composing music. So there is possibly a *little* creativity involved, but not much.

And if one API is already established in the minds of musicians as *THE API* for music, then perhaps there is an argument that it should be treated along the lines of a genericised trademark?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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