or how I learned programmers owe it all to fiber
As part of my bootcamp, I was asked to present for 10 minutes on any topic. I've been c...
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Ohhhh wow!!! I am always daydreaming about this connection while I'm knitting. Following a knitting pattern makes me feel like I'm a little ant crawling through a big computer program one assembly instruction at a time. I get to focus on every individual stitch-- sometimes counting them, sometimes waiting for a stitch marker. But at the same time, I get to see how that linear, small-scale behavior is generating a complex three dimensional object. A while ago I put together a website to put this kind of stuff Craftinatorics, focusing on quilting and knitting. I lost momentum as its complexity caught up with my budding website-management/eleventy skills, but I've bookmarked this on my list of essential things to link to! Thank you so much for writing this, wow!!
Great post! I'm learning to knit and find myself translating the pattern into pseudocode to better understand, like I have to do a series of stitches until it's 20cm long and I think oh! that's just a while loop
Exactly! I also find approaching new stitches to be very similar. "Hmm... this output doesn't look right. What can I change?"
Great post, never thought about comparing these two. Yet
... you got me on this1. I never tried handling cloth (I've got a pair of left hands for any crafting, really), and maybe I don't get the message behind that bullet point - but isn't knitting quite a lot about repetition? At least for parts of the cloth?
I say knitting pattern designers follow DRY like I would say programmers follow DRY. Good pattern designers try to cut down on the repetition of instruction (code). You are correct in that the act of knitting and a knitted garment involve a lot of repetition themselves, but they're execution and output respectively.
You can tell when a pattern is written by an experienced designer trying to cut down on repetition. The best examples are the kinds of for loops and while loops I described, but it also includes intelligent use and creation of charts, a set of rows repeated until the fabric is a certain length, and how the instructions for different sizes of output are notated, among other things.
Great read! I'd never thought about it before, but I can definitely see the overlap.
Love this post. Thanks for sharing.
yarn install octopus-sweater
This analogy is spot on! I love it!
If you feel responsible you can choose a suitable knitwear manufacturer to manufacture sweaters & knitwear.