Music and Building Software Systems

Recently, I was at a data science conference, day 1 was concluded with wonderful djembe (an African percussion instrument) workshop.

Art is Science made clear — Wilson Mizner

It was an interactive session where the audience in batches of 12, got a chance to go up on the stage and learn to play djembe for 15 minutes from the djembe guru [Ashok](http://jembeashok.com/). I was in the front row and was totally enjoying the workshop. At first, it was just nice to see people coming together and enjoying.

Slowly, as the workshop evolved, people started getting the hang of the rhythm and there was change in the tempo at which they were playing. The guru, stopped and advised them not to change the tempo as it will bring other musicians to a halt. I started paying more attention to his words and it started to strike a chord in a completely different way. Building software systems is like playing music in a band, you build systems that can function with each other at a tempo, thereby ensuring that one system does not break the other.

The guru, made the attendees play a constant rhythm and he backed it with a solo. The solo played was a completely different rhythm but it added to the harmony. He then asked people to just listen to others while playing and then you will understand the notes you can play. When playing in a group, you have to always attain harmony. It started making more and more sense, in today’s world we build asynchronous systems but we also ensure that the load of requests are handled in the right way thereby ensuring systems do not fail. We build systems to always listen and queue, we ensure we dont overload the other systems and always let them work in harmony.

By the end of 15 minutes, everyone enjoyed the joy of being One. It felt like everyone started understanding each other better and also their awareness for tempo was just getting better by the minute. If someone went off the tempo, he/she just stopped and would wait for the right time to pitch back in. Isn’t this exactly how systems are supposed to be built? We can find ways to build better systems, by learning and doing things that are not in the realm of computer science. The more we open our senses, the better we get at solving problems.

“There is no science without fancy and no art without fact.” — Vladimir Nabokov