Send More Paramedics

Code Riffs

Once upon a time I was deep into the MD/DC/VA area punk scene, and believe it or not I played in my share of bands and participated in my share of punk shows — both in the crowd and sometimes even on stage. I look back on this time fondly, but to be honest I can’t say that I ever contributed any song to the universe of music that was worth listening to. That said, while I can’t claim to have been a talented song-writer, like many aspiring musicians I did discover my fair share of riffs along the way.

A riff is an interesting little musical phrase that one often comes across whilst playing around with a guitar in a casual fashion. Very often riffs form the seeds of what becomes fully-realized songs. Sometimes these songs are good and sometimes they’re not, but in most cases they are grown like crystals from the original musical fragment found on the fret-board. For musicians, both practicing and aspiring, the riff represents a universe of potential out of which any number of potential works of musical art may spawn.

A few years ago I devised a phrase that I called Code Painting describing source code that: told a story, was usually not generally useful, was beautifully abstract, and created in the spirit of exploration. Unlike a code painting, a code riff is more atomic and often addresses a singular notion. If I were to characterize the attributes of a code riff then perhaps the following will suffice:

• A code riff exists independent to a project narrative
• A code riff need not be useful
• A code riff is often “found” during the act of playful programming or sprung forth from one’s mind
• A code riff should be beautiful, abstract, and as amusing if possible
• A code riff should invoke Huh? A ha! Ha ha! ¹

In my time I’ve created my share of code riffs; some that inspired something more and some still ripe with potential. If you’re interested in some code riffs then a few are available on Github as Tori Lisp, Evalive, and Unfix and additionally the break macro in chapter 17 of The Joy of Clojure.

Here’s a Clojure code riff from a presentation that I gave many years ago called “The Magnificent Seven”:

(def NIL ((fn [x y] (if (= x y) x)) = (= = =)))

(def CAR (fn [[h & _]] h))
(def CDR  (fn [[_ & t]] t))

(def CONS
  (fn [h t]
    (fn ([] h)
        ([_] t))))

(def FIRST (fn [s] (s)))
(def REST (fn [s] (s NIL)))

(FIRST (CONS 1 (CONS 2 NIL)))
;;=> 1

(FIRST (REST (CONS 1 (CONS 2 NIL)))
;;=> 2

Do you have any code riffs to share?

:F