Aw. I thought this was going to be more about using Unix as a natural language to write poetry, the way poetry competitions are held for programming languages.<p>I think it would be interesting if more programs were written with an aesthetic or artistic goal in mind, rather than functional. Like network code that has feelings, or fonts that get blurry the longer you look at them, or programs that, instead of crashing, simply find something else to do. Maybe a program written so the source is a poem about lost love, and results in bugs that randomly corrupts your memory on your lover's birthday.<p>I'm weird.
Nice introduction. Though I disagree his opinion that it is not worth learning awk in 2013.
For quick operations on DSV files it fits perfectly for the command line and learning its compact syntax is not hard for (most) Unix users.
A friend of mine is a poet. He is creating an entire mythological saga with an exact pool of letters per stanza. The same letters must appear in the same amounts in every one. He has programmed his own tools. I think he uses Python.
It brings a certain awesome vibe to the story. It's a bit like photography in colored versus natural light.
I've been encountering a lot of deep humanities types lately who nevertheless are not mathematically incompetent, have math knowledge up to (say) first-year and can code competent small-script Python just fine thank you. And frankly, we need more of this. The STEM/humanities divide is artificial, and any competent intelligent person needs to be able to sling both to at least a basic level.
Who can post a copy of nyt_200811.txt somewhere? This resource looks great, but it seems you need shell access at Stanford to get a copy of the example data set used?