# LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command

DevFeed: [LOLWUT: a piece of art inside a database command](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/lolwut-a-piece-of-art-inside-a-database-command-20614.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://antirez.com/news/123>)

Published: 2018-09-12T15:20:28Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Antirez](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/antirez.md>)

Topics: [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [Redis](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/redis.md>), [Hacking](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hacking.md>)

Tags: [art](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/art.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [hack](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hack.md>), [hacking](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hacking.md>), [patterns](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/patterns.md>), [redis](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/redis.md>), [source](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/source.md>), [writing-code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/writing-code.md>)

## AI overview

The author reflects on writing code with "hack value" even when it has no measurable technological effect. The discussion connects Redis source-code changes, an exploratory view of hacking, and computer art inspired by Georg Nees's Schotter.

## Source excerpt

The last few days have been quite intense. One of the arguments, about the dispute related to replacing or not the words used in Redis replication with different ones, was the following: is it worthwhile to do work that does not produce any technological result? As I was changing the Redis source code to get rid of a specific word where possible, I started to think that whatever my idea was about the work I was doing, I'm the kind of person that enjoys writing code that has no measurable technological effects. Replacing words is just annoying, even if, even there, there were a few worthwhile technological challenges. But there is some other kind of code that I believe has a quality called "hack value". It may not solve any technological problem, yet it's worth to write. Sometimes because the process of writing the code is, itself, rewarding. Other times because very technically advanced ideas are used to solve a not useful problem. Sometimes code is just written for artistic reasons. In some way the Twitter discussion of the last days, mostly uninformed, chaotic, heated, made me think that, at this point, we are very far from the first hackers in the 60s. As I get older I find that it is harder and harder to talk about technology with an hacking perspective, where there are no walls or pre-cooked ideas, and the limit is the exploration. For everything you say there is a best practice. For every idea there is a taboo. To this new setup I say LOLWUT, since I don't feel represented by it, nor it represents hacking, at least in my vision. So the idea was to spend some technologically useless time in order to explore something of the 60s. My attention went immediately to one of the computer art pieces I love the most: Schotter, by Georg Nees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Nees). With the help of a plotter and ALGOL programs, Nees explored writing programs to generate art using caos (randomness) and repeating patterns. Schotter is remarkable because of the simplicit