Creativity (or “creativeness”) is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.
- Wikipedia

Looking at the first part of this of the definition I think it is easy to see why programming involves so much creativity. Now this does however depend on the role of the programmer doing the programming. Creating an html page for the one-thousandth time doesn’t take much creativity but on the other end creating a robust server client application for a multi-player game often involves generating many new ideas and concepts. In this particular example the ideas and concepts would be focuses around creating a new protocol or working on reducing bandwidth used by the game. This is where a programmer really gets to show his or her creativity.

Programmer Fall Into Two Categories

When contemplating all the different programmers there are out there I think they really fall into one of three categories, repetitive programmer, creative programmer, or a combination. There are many programmers out there that prefer to program the same solution over and over, these people prefer to know exactly what they are going to program and how – they are not interested on how we get to the solution. The second set of programmers are at the other extreme, these people truly prefer coming up with the solution and are completely bored with programming the same thing day after day. The final group falls somewhere between the two. Personally I think I fall into the second category but there are days where I don’t want to have to use my brain to push out any useful code.

As always there are many ways the definition of creativity can be interpreted but I truly feel that programmers are one of many creative technical fields out there today. They aren’t writers or designers by any mean but I think that is a different kind of creativity. Feel free to let me know where you think I am wrong or right.

Red River Gorge Trail Map, courtesy FlyingFishManky

Memorial Day weekend marks the first time I have had the chance to go to Red River Gorge. A few of my friends and I spent the weekend entertaining ourselves with all the different activities that the region has to offer. We started out the weekend by taking a nice hike to see the Hidden Arch, a short trail. You can see some pictures in my Red River Gorge album on my photos page. We also went out and checked out Silvermine Arch which happened to be right by our campsite at Koomer Ridge. Ohh and don’t try to find directions to the camp ground on any map sites because they don’t have any that will lead you the correct place.

On the second day, we did some more hiking. We checked out a couple pretty cool natural features out there, the Rock Bridge Arch and Creation Falls. I even got to indulge the kid inside me and climb around on the bridge. This was a relatively short hike, I would advise anyone who takes a trip out to the gorge to do it. I should also mention that it was a paved trail for most of it, making it easier access for some. It amazes me that Kentucky has natural beauties such as these. Also planned for the day was kayaking, but because some loser at the outfitters “forgot” about talking to us on the phone in the morning it got pushed to Monday. This left us with some more time to play around in the outdoors.

Climbing out of a cave

Climbing around in caves was what we did for the majority of the rest of the day. This included two caves, one which we knew about from word of mouth (cave a) and one that we simply found (cave b). This was probably my single favorite event of the weekend. We actually found cave b first, it was a very small cave with only a few rooms and most of the time was spent either crawling or walking on our hands and knees. Initially we thought that this was the cave talked about but eventually we ran into the end of the line. Cave a, however, was a different story. Climbing through the cave was very exhilarating, at one point early on we figured we had come to the end, but another group going through the save stepped up and lead the way – up. The rest of the adventure through the cave was spent climbing up and out of the cave – very exciting. I can’t wait to get out and venture into more caves. I hope to make it down to Mammoth Caves again sometime soon. Most of the night was consumed with hanging out and eating lots of food, we also got to see a Black Widow up close and personal – no one was harmed.

Our final day was spent kayaking down the Red, but not before a short quarter mile hike to see the Angel Windows. This too was a very scenic area. There was one item that bothered me though, me flipping my kayak. Yeah, I hit a rock and rolled my kayak, what a bummer. I even lost my glasses. Good thing I have a spare pair. Water snakes were also abundant as we moved down the river. Nevertheless the trip was awesome and I can’t wait to get back out to the Red River Gorge and do it again. I would recommend the area to any of my friends – well at least the ones who make it outside every now and then.