yikes scripting

one of the goals i had this christmas was to learn php. all i really wanted to do was make a cool style switcher like my brother has on his website... but then i decided it might be good if i could understand what the weird computer language actually meant. maybe. right?

well it isn't going to be easy. i never wanted to be a computer scientist. i never really wanted to be a scientist at all. i don't like science. i don't like math or any of that junk. i am an english major. yeah.

so i've been bugging my little brother all week about this, and he says why do you need me to teach you? why don't you just go learn it? but he has been fairly helpful. he shows me links, and opens my eyes to the possibilities of open source software and junk. he says this is a good book for beginning programmers: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist. in the first chapter it says,

Like mathematicians, computer scientists use formal languages to denote ideas (specifically computations). Like engineers, they design things, assembling components into systems and evaluating tradeoffs among alternatives. Like scientists, they observe the behavior of complex systems, form hypotheses, and test predictions.

The single most important skill for a computer scientist is problem solving. Problem solving means the ability to formulate problems, think creatively about solutions, and express a solution clearly and accurately. As it turns out, the process of learning to program is an excellent opportunity to practice problem-solving skills.

and as it opens those sentences with 'like mathematicians...' and 'like engineers...' i keep waiting for the 'like writers...' or something that will connect me and my kind of thinking with this alien world of programming. the wikipedia entry under computer programing says "Programming has elements of art, science, mathematics, and engineering." so when do i get to see the art of it? when do i get to be familiar enough with any perl or python or java or whatever language to see the beauty in all those variables, operations, and loops? how many tutuorials do i have to read? how much of my own ignorance do i have to wade through?

i don't know. but that problem solving stuff... i know i'm going to be invovled in that somewhere. rhetoric and design are all part of the answer too, not just this scientific hypothesizing and bizarre programming. probably all humans are after one solved problem or another.
i don't know if programming will give me any more solutions or if it will just be a waste of my everso creative brainpower, but hey, why not try it?