Students Reliant on Computer Simulations Lack the Technical Expertise to Question Them

In the 1980s, alternate visions of computers and the future of design were expressed in competing views about programming. Some architects believed that designers needed to learn advanced programming. If designers did not understand how their tools were constructed, they would not only be dependent on computer experts but less likely to challenge screen realities. Other architects disagreed. They argued that, in the future, creativity would not depend on understanding one’s tools but on using them with >nesse; the less one got tied up in the technical details of software, the freer one would be to focus exclusively on design. They saw programming and design as at odds; they discussed them as though the technicity of the >rst would impinge on the artistry of the second. Such views were in?uential: architecture students peppered their conversation with phrases such as, “I will never be a computer hacker” and “I don’t consider myself a hacker.” One graduate student in architecture explained how it was not possible to be both a “computer person” and a good designer at the same time: “Can you be a surgeon and a psychiatrist? I don’t think you can. I think you have to make a choice.” Another worried about becoming too competent at programming: “I don’t want to become so good at it that I’m stuck in front of a computer forty hours a week. It’s a matter of selective ignorance.”